The Palace of the Seven Stories

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



The past it is a fearful thing,
With an eagle’s sweep, and a tiger's spring.
Here was a palace, the dwelling of kings,
Now to its turrets the creeping plant clings.

The past it is a mighty grave ;
What remains for the present to save ?
A few sad thoughts, a few brief words.
These are the richest of memory's hoards.

Where temples stood, the tamarinds grow ;
Broken columns are mouldering below.
No steps are heard in the ruined hall.
Such is man’s pride, and such is its fall.

The Seven-storied Palace is a ruin of great beauty. Captain Sykes states, “that it must have been a splendid building ; the remains of carved work and gilding indicate that no expense or art was spared.” Bejapore is one of the most picturesque cities in Hindostan. Immense tamarind trees spread their rich foliage over the magnificent remains of mosques and mausoleums, or partially cover some finely broken palace or beautiful tank. Tradition records a characteristic anecdote of the building of the palace. “The inhabitants of a small village called Kejgunally, complaining of the injury they were exposed to, from the works in progress, the king, with a whimsical affectation of justice, surrounded them with a high wall. The village, in the course of time, disappeared ; but the wall remains, and is pointed out as a proof of the severe justice of the king, who chose rather to comply with the literal wish of the inhabitants, of being protected from injury, than remove them by force to a more desirable spot.”
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Submitted by Madeleine Quinn on May 21, 2016

Modified on March 05, 2023

1:18 min read
47

Quick analysis:

Scheme AABB CCXX DDEE X
Characters 1,493
Words 259
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4, 1

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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