Airey Force

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



Aye, underneath yon shadowy side,
    I could be fain to fix my home;
Where dashes down the torrent’s pride,
    In sparkling wave, and silver foam.

No other sound is waking there,
   But that perpetual voice, which seems
Like spirit music on the air,
          An echo from the world of dreams.

They were more wise in other days;
   Then turn’d the hermit to his cell,
And left a world where all betrays,
          Apart with his own thoughts to dwell.

Content to curb the heart, to be
    Indifferent, quiet, mournful, cold
With hopes turn’d into memory,
    With feelings that had lost their hold.

Far better this, than such vain life
    As is in crowded cities known;
Where care, repining, grief, and strife,
    Make every passing hour their own.

There, by yon torrent’s rushing wave,
    I’d pass what yet of time remain'd;
And feel the quiet of the grave
    Long ere that grave itself were gain’d.
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Submitted by Madeleine Quinn on September 17, 2016

Modified on April 20, 2023

46 sec read
80

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABAB CDCD EFEF GHGH IJIJ KXKA
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 903
Words 153
Stanzas 6
Stanza Lengths 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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