Life's Mask

Letitia Elizabeth Landon 1802 (Chelsea) – 1838 (Cape Coast)



Which was the true philosopher ?—the sage
Who to the sorrows and the crimes of life
Gave tears —or he who laughed at all he saw?
Such mockery is bitter, and yet just:
And Heaven well knows the cause there is to weep.
Methinks that life is what the actor is —
Outside there is the quaint and gibing mask ;
Beneath, the pale and careworn countenance.
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Submitted by Madeleine Quinn on June 10, 2016

Modified on March 05, 2023

19 sec read
51

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABCDEFGH
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 347
Words 66
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 8

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Letitia Elizabeth Landon was an English poet. Born 14th August 1802 at 25 Hans Place, Chelsea, she lived through the most productive period of her life nearby, at No.22. A precocious child with a natural gift for poetry, she was driven by the financial needs of her family to become a professional writer and thus a target for malicious gossip (although her three children by William Jerdan were successfully hidden from the public). In 1838, she married George Maclean, governor of Cape Coast Castle on the Gold Coast, whence she travelled, only to die a few months later (15th October) of a fatal heart condition. Behind her post-Romantic style of sentimentality lie preoccupations with art, decay and loss that give her poetry its characteristic intensity and in this vein she attempted to reinterpret some of the great male texts from a woman’s perspective. Her originality rapidly led to her being one of the most read authors of her day and her influence, commencing with Tennyson in England and Poe in America, was long-lasting. However, Victorian attitudes led to her poetry being misrepresented and she became excluded from the canon of English literature, where she belongs. more…

All Letitia Elizabeth Landon poems | Letitia Elizabeth Landon Books

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