The Wishing Gate

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



Wishes, no ! I have not one,
Hope’s sweet toil with me is done ;
One by one have flitted by,
All the rainbows of the sky.
Not a star could now unfold
Aught I once wished to be told.
What have I to seek of thee?
Not a wish remains for me.

Let the soldier pause to ask,
Honour on his glorious task ;
Let the parting sailor crave
A free wild wind across the wave ;
Let the maiden pause to frame
Blessings on some treasured name ;
Let them breathe their hopes in thee,
Not a wish remains for me.
 
Not a wish ! beat not my heart,
Thou hast bade thy dreams depart ;
They have past, but left behind
Weary spirit, wasted mind.
Ah ! if this old charm were sooth,
One wish yet might tax its truth
I would ask, however vain,
Never more to wish again.

* I believe that to this haunted gate a common superstition is attached, namely, that to wish and to have that wish fulfilled, is the result of such wish being uttered while passing.
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Submitted by Madeleine Quinn on September 17, 2016

Modified on March 05, 2023

53 sec read
130

Quick analysis:

Scheme aabbccdD eeffggdD hhiidxxx x
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 920
Words 178
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 8, 8, 8, 1

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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