Fate

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



The steps of Fate are dark and terrible;
And not here may we trace them to the goal.
If I could doubt the heaven in which I hope,
The doubt would vanish, gazing upon life,
And seeing what it needs of peace and rest.
Life is but like a journey during night.
We toil through gloomy paths of the unknown ;
Heavy the footsteps are with pitfalls round;
And few and faint the stars that guide our way :
But, at the last, comes morning ; glorious
Shines forth the light of day, and so will shine
The heaven which is our future and our home.
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Submitted by Madeleine Quinn on July 27, 2016

Modified on May 04, 2023

30 sec read
90

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABCDEFGHIJKL
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 522
Words 103
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 12

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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