Ivy Bridge, Devonshire

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



Oh, recall not the past, though this valley be filled
     With all we remember, and all we regret;
The flowers of its summer have long been distilled,
     The essence has perish'd, ah! let us forget.
What avails it to mourn over hours that are gone,
     O'er illusions by youth and by fantasy nurst?
Alas! of the few that are lingering, none
     Wear the light or the hues that encircled the first.

Alas for the springtime! alas for our youth!
     The grave has no slumber more cold than the heart,
When languid and darkened it sinks into truth,
     And sees the sweet colours of morning depart.
Life still has its falsehoods to lure and to leave,
     But they cannot delude like the earlier light;
We know that the twilight encircles the eve,
     And sunset is only the rainbow of night.
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Submitted by Madeleine Quinn on December 04, 2016

Modified by Madeleine Quinn on March 01, 2020

42 sec read
114

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABABXAXX CDCDEFEF
Closest metre Iambic hexameter
Characters 782
Words 139
Stanzas 2
Stanza Lengths 8, 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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