The Past

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



Weep for the love that fate forbids;
    Yet loves, unhoping, on,
Though every light that once illumed
    Its early path be gone.

Weep for the love that must resign
    The soul's enchanted dream,
And float, like some neglected bark,
    Adown life's lonely stream!

Weep for the love that cannot change;
    Like some unholy spell,
It hangs upon the life that loved
    So vainly and so well.

Weep for the weary heart condemned
    To one long, lonely sigh,
Whose lot has been in this cold world.
    To dream, despair, and die!
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Submitted by Madeleine Quinn on December 06, 2016

Modified by Madeleine Quinn on March 04, 2020

27 sec read
114

Quick analysis:

Scheme XXAX XBXB XCAC AXAA
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 528
Words 90
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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