Expectation

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



She looked from out the window
With long and asking gaze,
From the gold clear light of morning
    To the twilight’s purple haze.
Gold and pale the planets shone,
Still the girl kept gazing on.
From her white and weary forehead
    Droopeth the dark hair,
Heavy with the dews of evening,
    Heavier with her care;
Falling as the shadows fall,
Till flung round her like a pall.

When from the carved lattice
    First she leant to look,
Her bright face was written
    Like some pleasant book;
Her warm cheek the red air quaffed,
And her eyes looked out and laughed.
She is leaning back now languid
    And her cheek is white,
Only on the drooping eyelash
    Glistens tearful light.
Colour, sunshine hours are gone,
Yet the Lady watches on.

Human heart this history
    Is thy fated lot,
Even such thy watching
    For what cometh not
Till with anxious waiting dull
Round thee fades the beautiful.
Still thou seekest on though weary,
    Seeking still in vain;
Daylight deepens into twilight,
    What has been thy gain?
Death and night are closing round,
All that thou hast sought unfound.
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Submitted by Madeleine Quinn on February 29, 2020

Modified on March 05, 2023

55 sec read
15

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABCBXDXECEXX XFXFAXXGXGXD HICIJJHKGKXA
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 1,057
Words 186
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 12, 12, 12

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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