Views of Life

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



We tremble even in our happiness;
Hurried and dim, the unknown hours press
Heavy with care or grief, that none may ever guess.

The future is more present than the past:
For one look back a thousand on we cast,
And Hope doth ever Memory outlast.

For Hope say Fear—Hope is a timid thing,
Fearful, and weak, and born in suffering;
At least, such Hope as human life can bring.

Its home, it is not here, it looks beyond;
And, while it carries an enchanter's wand,
Its spells are conscious of their earthly bond.
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Submitted by Madeleine Quinn on July 27, 2016

Modified by Madeleine Quinn on March 02, 2020

28 sec read
62

Quick analysis:

Scheme XAA BBB CCC DDD
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 497
Words 94
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 3, 3, 3, 3

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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