Revenge

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



Ay, gaze upon her rose-wreathed hair,
      And gaze upon her smile;
Seem as you drank the very air
      Her breath perfumed the while:

And wake for her the gifted line,
      That wild and witching lay,
And swear your heart is as a shrine,
      That only owns her sway.

'Tis well: I am revenged at last,—
      Mark you that scornful cheek,—
The eye averted as you pass'd,
      Spoke more than words could speak.

Ay, now by all the bitter tears
      That I have shed for thee,—
The racking doubts, the burning fears,—
      Avenged they well may be—

By the nights pass'd in sleepless care,
      The days of endless woe;
All that you taught my heart to bear,
      All that yourself will know.

I would not wish to see you laid
      Within an early tomb;
I should forget how you betray'd,
      And only weep your doom:

But this is fitting punishment,
      To live and love in vain,—
Oh my wrung heart, be thou content,
      And feed upon his pain.

Go thou and watch her lightest sigh,—
      Thine own it will not be;
And bask beneath her sunny eye,—
      It will not turn on thee.

'Tis well: the rack, the chain, the wheel,
      Far better hadst thou proved;
Ev'n I could almost pity feel,
      For thou art nor beloved.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 18, 2023

1:08 min read
331

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABAB CDCD EFEF XGXG AHAH IJIJ XKXK LGLG MXMX
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 1,226
Words 225
Stanzas 9
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4, 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…

All Letitia Elizabeth Landon poems | Letitia Elizabeth Landon Books

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