The Cootub Minar, Delhi

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



I HAVE forgotten,” ’tis a common phrase
Said every hour, and said of every thing;
Objects of sight and hearing pass away,
As they had not impressed the eye nor ear:
Faces we loved, the voices we thought sweet,
Go from us utterly; the very heart
Remembers not its beatings; hopes, and fears,
In multitudes, leave not a trace behind.
One half of our existence is a blank;
A mighty empire hath forgetfulness !
History is but a page in the great past,
So few amid Time’s records are unsealed.—
Here is a mighty tower : ere it was raised
Its builders must have had wealth, power, and time,
And a desire beyond the present hour.
Do not these mark a period and a state
Refined and civilized ? a people past
Through each first process of humanity ?
No dwellers these in tents, who only sought
A palm-tree and a well; and left behind
No sign, but a scant herbage. They who built
This lofty tower, which still defies decay,
Must have left many traces ; yet not so—
This tower is all, and that has long since lost
All evidence of former times and men,
It has not one tradition.

It is curious to observe the complete oblivion that has attended all man’s greatest efforts; those which asked their immortality of brick and stone. Architecture is the earliest and the most forgetful of the sciences. The pyramids
remain as eternal as the earth that bears them; but the name of their founder has long since perished. The work is mightier than its master. The least intellectual effort has a memory far more lasting than that shrined by temple or tower. To me this seems the triumph of mind over matter.
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Submitted by Madeleine Quinn on August 05, 2016

Modified on April 22, 2023

1:26 min read
324

Quick analysis:

Scheme AXBXXXXCXADXXXEXDXXCXBXXXX XE
Closest metre Iambic heptameter
Characters 1,571
Words 289
Stanzas 2
Stanza Lengths 26, 2

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…

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