The Princess Charlotte

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



THE tears of a nation were shed for her doom,
The wail of a people rose over her tomb.
From palace and cottage one funeral cry,
Asked—So gay and so lovely, oh, how could she die ?

Scarce a year since her bridal had gladdened the land,
The wreath on her forehead, the ring on her hand :
When forth went the summons, and down came the blow;
And the young hope of England in dust was laid low.

Alas, for her husband, though others may weep,
Ah, what is their sorrow, to what he must keep !
A dream for his midnight, a shade for his day,
For which time has no comfort, and hope has no stay.

Love may be forgotten, when false or when vain ;
And pride may recover its calmness again.
But where is the solace for tears that are shed
O’er the hope of a life-time, the loved and the dead.

Oh ! folly of deeming aught earthly can last,
Life never knew sorrow whose reign has not past.
Oh ! mockery of mockeries, to trust human heart,
Whose grief is a shadow, to come and depart:

For he, the heart-broken, hath joy at his side,
And again at the altar he stands with his bride.
Oh! dark shades of Claremont, find brightness and bloom,
For the widower desolate returns a bridegroom.

“It is said, that Leopold and his young bride intend visiting this country, when they will spend a fortnight at Claremont.”—Morning Paper.
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Submitted by Madeleine Quinn on July 31, 2016

Modified on March 05, 2023

1:13 min read
63

Quick analysis:

Scheme AABB CCDD EEFF XXGG HHII JJAA X
Closest metre Iambic hexameter
Characters 1,294
Words 245
Stanzas 7
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4, 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…

All Letitia Elizabeth Landon poems | Letitia Elizabeth Landon Books

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