Rebecca

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



She looketh on the glittering scene
    With an unquiet eye;
The shadow of the wakening heart
    Is passing darkly by.
The heart that is a woman’s world,
    Her temple and her home,
Which coloureth with itself her cares,
    Whence all her joys must come.

All generous feelings nursed the love
    That out of pity came;
Womanly kindness, suffering truth,
    Might sanctify its claim.
But better had she shared the doom,
    She bade from him depart;
Death has no bitterness like life,
    Life with a wasted heart.

Proud—beautiful—she boweth down
    Beneath one deep despair;
Youth lingers lovely on her cheek,
    It only lingers there.
She will command herself, and bear
    The doom by Fate assigned;
In natures high as her's, the heart
    Is mastered by the mind.

But not the less ’tis desolate,
    All lofty thoughts and dreams;
The poetry, with whose deep life
    All stronger feeling teems.
These aggravate the ill, and give
    A misery of their own;
The gifted spirit suffers much,
    To common ones unknown.

Why did she love? Alas, such choice
    Is not at woman’s will;
Once must she love, and on that cast
    Is set life’s good or ill.
Sorrows, and timid cares, and tears,
    The happiest entertain;
But this world has no other hope,
    For her who loves in vain.
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Submitted by Madeleine Quinn on February 28, 2020

Modified on March 05, 2023

1:04 min read
16

Quick analysis:

Scheme XABAXXCX XDXDXBEB XFXFFGBG XHEHXIXI XJXJCKXK
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 1,290
Words 215
Stanzas 5
Stanza Lengths 8, 8, 8, 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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