Strada Reale.—Corfu

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



I am weary of the green wood
Where haunteth the wild bee,
And the olive’s silvery foliage
Droops o’er the myrtle tree.

The fountain singeth silvery,
As with a sleepy song,
It wandereth the bright mosses,
And drooping flowers among.

I will seek the cheerful city,
And in the crowded street,
See if I can find the traces
Of pleasure’s winged feet.

The bells are ringing gayly,
And their music gladdens all,
From the towers in the sunshine,
To the date and orange stall.

Gay voices are around me,
I seem to gladden too;
And a thousand changing objects
Win my wandering eyes anew.

It is pleasant through the city
In a sunny day to roam;
And yet my full heart turns to thee,
My own, my greenwood home.
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Submitted by Madeleine Quinn on March 03, 2020

Modified on March 05, 2023

38 sec read
14

Quick analysis:

Scheme XAXA AXBX ACBC DDXD AEXE AFAF
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 697
Words 129
Stanzas 6
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4

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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