Analysis of The Unknown Grave

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



There is a little lonely grave
    Which no one comes to see,
The foxglove and red orchis wave
    Their welcome to the bee.
There never falls the morning sun,
    It lies beneath the wall,
But there when weary day is done
    The lights of sunset fall,
Flushing the warm and crimson air
As life and hope were present there.

There sleepeth one who left his heart
    Behind him in his song;
Breathing of that diviner part
    Which must to heaven belong.
The language of those spirit chords,
    But to the poet known,
Youth, love, and hope yet use his words,
    They seem to be his own.
And yet he has not left a name,
The poet died without his fame.

How many are the lovely lays
    That haunt our English tongue,
Defrauded of their poet’s praise
    Forgotten he who sung.
Tradition only vaguely keeps
    Sweet fancies round this tomb;
Its tears are what the wild flower weeps,
    Its record is that bloom;
Ah, surely nature keeps with her
The memory of her worshipper.

One of her loveliest mysteries
    Such spirit blends at last
With all the fairy fantasies
    Which o’er some scenes are cast.
A softer beauty fills the grove,
    A light is in the grass,
A deeper sense of truth and love
    Comes o’er us as we pass;
While lingers in the heart one line,
The nameless poet hath a shrine.


Scheme ABABCDCDEE FGFGXHXHII JKJKLMLMXE NONOXPXPQQ
Poetic Form Etheree  (33%)
Metre 11010101 111111 010111 110101 11010101 110101 11110111 01111 10010101 11010101 1111111 011011 101111 1111001 01011101 110101 11011111 111111 01111101 01010111 11010101 1110101 01011101 010111 01010101 110111 111101101 101111 11010110 0100101 1101100 110111 11010100 111111 01010101 011001 01011101 111111 11000111 01010101
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 1,265
Words 232
Sentences 9
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 10, 10, 10, 10
Lines Amount 40
Letters per line (avg) 24
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 243
Words per stanza (avg) 58
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Submitted by Madeleine Quinn on March 01, 2020

Modified on April 21, 2023

1:09 min read
18

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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