Sir Thomas Hardy

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



Silence is now upon the seas,
    The silent seas of yore;
The thunder of the cannonade
    Awakes the wave no more.

The battle-flag droops o’er the mast,
    There quiet let it sleep;
For it hath won in wilder hours
    Its empire o’er the deep.

Now let it wave above their home,
    Of those who fought afar;
The victors of the Baltic sea,
    The brave of Trafalgar.

Upon a terrace by the Thames,
    I saw the Admiral stand;
He who received the latest clasp*
    Of Nelson’s dying hand.

Age, toil, and care had somewhat bowed
    His bearing proud and high;
But yet resolve was on his lip,
    And fire was in his eye.

I felt no wonder England holds
    Dominion o’er the seas;
Still the red cross will face the world,
    While she hath men like these.

And gathered there beneath the sun
    Were loitering veterans old;
As if of former victories
    And former days they told.

No prouder trophy hath our isle,
    Though proud her trophies be,
Than that old palace where are housed
    The veterans of the sea.

Her other domes—her wealth, her pride,
    Her science may declare;
But Greenwich hath the noblest claim,
    Her gratitude is there.


His favourite captain:—Nelson died in Sir Thomas Hardy’s arms. Too long for extract here, the account of that battle and death is at once the most exciting and yet touching record I know in English history.
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Submitted by Madeleine Quinn on February 22, 2020

Modified on May 02, 2023

1:11 min read
56

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABCB CDXD XXEX XCXC CFXF XACA XCAC XECE CGXG E
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 1,359
Words 237
Stanzas 10
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 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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