Mardale Head

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



Why should I seek these scenes again, the past
⁠Is on yon valley like a shroud?

Weep for the love that fate forbids,
    Yet loves unhoping on,
Though every light that once illumed
    Its early path be gone.

Weep for the love that must resign
    The heart's enchanted dream,
And float, like some neglected bark,
    Adown life's lonely stream.

Weep for the love these scenes recall,
    Like some enduring spell;
It rests within the soul which loved
    Too vainly, and too well.

Weep for the breaking heart condemn'd
    To see its youth pass by,
Whose lot has been in this cold world
    To dream, despair, and die.

"Among the mountains which form the southern boundary of Haweswater is Mardale Head, a wild and solitary region, wherein nature, working with a master hand, seems to have produced the very beau ideal of romantic grandeur and sublimity. The beautiful representation which the artist has given, renders description almost needless, and almost impossible."
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Submitted by Madeleine Quinn on February 11, 2020

Modified on March 05, 2023

49 sec read
25

Quick analysis:

Scheme AX XXAX XBXB XCXC XDXD X
Closest metre Iambic hexameter
Characters 975
Words 162
Stanzas 6
Stanza Lengths 2, 4, 4, 4, 4, 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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