Love's Timidity

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



I do not ask to offer thee
A timid love like mine ;
I lay it, as the rose is laid,
On some immortal shrine.

I have no hope in loving thee,
I only ask to love ;
I brood upon my silent heart,
As on its nest the dove.

But little have I been beloved,
Sad, silent, and alone ;
And yet I feel, in loving thee,
The wide world is mine own.

Thine is the name I breathe to Heaven.
Thy face is on my sleep ;
I only ask that love like this
May pray for thee and weep.
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Submitted by Madeleine Quinn on June 19, 2016

Modified on March 05, 2023

29 sec read
359

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABXB ACXC XDAD XEXE
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 455
Words 98
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 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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