Ten Years Ago

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



"Ten years ago," the world was then
A pleasant and a lovely dream;
Life was a river banked by flowers,
With sunshine glancing o'er the stream;
The path was new, and there was thrown
A sweet veil over pleasure's ray;
But ignorance is happiness,
When young Hope is to show the way;
And fair the scenes that hope would show
When youth was bright "ten years ago."

Ten years are past,— life is no more
The fairy land that once I knew—
Pleasures have proved but falling stars,
And many a sweetest spell untrue:
But may I look on these dear ones,
Feel their soft smile, their rosy kiss;
Or may I turn, Beloved, to thee,
My own home-star of truth and bliss!
While love's sweet lights thus round me glow,
Can I regret "ten years ago?" ⁠
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Submitted by Madeleine Quinn on October 24, 2019

Modified on March 05, 2023

44 sec read
30

Quick analysis:

Scheme XAXAXBXBCC XDXDXEXECC
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 763
Words 145
Stanzas 2
Stanza Lengths 10, 10

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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