Caldron Snout.—Westmorland



A place of rugged rocks, adown whose sides
The mountain torrent rushes; on whose crags
The raven builds her nest, and tells her young
Of former funeral feasts.
    ⁠*⁠    *    ⁠*    ⁠*    ⁠*    ⁠*    ⁠*

Long years have past since last I stood
    Alone amid this mountain scene,
Unlike the future which I dreamed,
    How like my future it has been!
A cold grey sky o'erhung with clouds,
    With showers in every passing shade,
How like the moral atmosphere
    Whose gloom my horoscope has made!

I thought if yet my weary feet
    Could rove my native hills again,
A world of feeling would revive,
    Sweet feelings wasted, worn in vain.
My early hopes, my early joys,
    I dreamed those valleys would restore;
I asked for childhood to return,
    For childhood, which returns no more.

Surely the scene itself is changed!
    There did not always rest as now
That shadow in the valley's depth,
    That gloom upon the mountain brow.
Wild flowers within the chasms dwelt
    Like treasures in some fairy hold,
And morning o'er the mountains shed
    Her kindling world of vapory gold.

Another season of the year
    Is now upon the earth and me;
Another spring will light these hills—
    No other spring mine own may be:
I must retune my unstrung heart,
    I must awake the sleeping tomb,
I must recall the loved and lost,
    Ere spring again for me could bloom.

I've wandered, but it was in vain
    In many a far and foreign clime,
Absence is not forgetfulness,
    And distance cannot vanquish time.
One face was ever in my sight,
    One voice was ever on my ear,
From all earth's loveliness I turned
    To wish, Ah that the dead were here!

Oh! weary wandering to no home,
    Oh! weary wandering alone,
I turned to childhood's once glad scenes
    And found life's last illusion flown.
Ah! those who left their childhood's scenes
    For after years of toil and pain,
Who but bring back the breaking heart
    Should never seek those scenes again.
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Submitted by Madeleine Quinn on February 10, 2020

Modified on March 05, 2023

1:43 min read
17

Quick analysis:

Scheme AAXX XXXXXBCB XDXEXFXF XGXGXHXH CIXIJKXK EIAXXLXL XMNMNEJD
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 1,923
Words 335
Stanzas 7
Stanza Lengths 5, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8

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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