Letitia Elizabeth Landon

“ Every year, one sees a young woman in a white gown, and a young man in a blue coat, adventuring on what is called "the happiest day of one’s life;" so called, perhaps, as they are never very particularly happy afterwards. Equally, every year, does one witness couples who, in like manner, begin in blue and white, continuing in green and yellow melancholy: yet no one takes warning by the example; all seem to expect a miracle from fate, in their own favour—what business they have to expect it, I don't know; but we do flatter ourselves strangely. ”

“ KISHEN KOWER.* [1]
"Bold as the falcon that faces the sun,
Wild as the streams when in torrents they run,
Fierce as the flame when the jungle’s on fire,
Are the chieftains who call on the day-star as Sire.
Since the Moghuls were driven from stately Mandoo,†Jumna Musjid, Mandoo
And left but their ruins their reign to renew,
Those hills have paid tribute to no foreign lord,
And their children have kept what they won by the sword. ”

“ I went to bed, and dreamt of getting up early, and really had new-laid eggs, and milk from the cow, for breakfast; but—for the truth may be told, when we are tired to death of keeping it to ourselves—I am a miserable man: I really do not know what to do with myself, the nights are so long; for I go to bed soon, and get up late—and the days are yet longer. In vain I remind myself, that I have realized my former dreams of human felicity; that I bake my own bread, grow my own vegetables, and kill my own mutton. ”

“ But a soldier has honour—life’s first and best chord;
He may die for his love, but he lives for his word.
He belts on his sword, and he springs on his steed,
And the spur is dyed red as he urges its speed ”

“ I dismissed my foulards, intent on those radiant foulards of the garden:
"Tulips, that every shade of colour wear."
Let me not be ungrateful—I was happy for a month, which is as long as a honeymoon, perhaps longer: here I can’t speak from experience; the poetry by which I have regulated my existence is eloquent upon love, but silent upon matrimony. Moore says, no great genius ever yet lived happily with his wife. I thought it too great a risk, as their disciple, to try; some of the evil influence might have descended on me, their devout worshipper ”

“ The chattah that glitters with gems is outspread,
Whence the silver bells fall with their musical sound,
While the howdah’s‡ [4] red trappings float bright on the ground:
Behind stalk the camels, which, weary and worn,
Seem to stretch their long necks, and repine at the morn:
And wild on the air the fierce war-echoes come,
The voice of the atabal, trumpet, and drum:
Half lost in the shout that ascends from the crowd,
Who delight in the young, and the brave, and the proud.
Tis folly to talk of the right and the wrong,
The triumph will carry the many along. ”

“ Her eyes upon her city turn—alas! what can they meet,
But famine, and despair, and death, in every lonely street?
Women and children wander pale, or with despairing eye
Look farewell to their native hearths, and lay them down to die. ”

“ Type of what may never last,
Soon the heaven of youth is past.
Oh! farewell—for never more
Can thy dreams again be mine;
Hope and truth and faith are o’er,
And the heart which was their shrine
Has no boon of thee to seek,
Asking but to rest or break. ”

“ The springs of sympathy, the mines of thought,
And all the deep emotions of the heart.
To colour the fine paintings of the mind,
And bid them move and breathe. Our island bard,
He who flung human life upon his page,
How much he owes the actor. ”

“ Was never meant for thee,
I sing but from my heart, and thine—
It cannot beat with me.
"You have not knelt in vain despair,
Beneath a love as vain,
That desperate—that devoted love,
Life never knows again. ”

“ And such the hearts that thou dost choose,
As pure, as fair, to shelter thee;
Alas! they know not what they lose
Who chance thy dwelling-place to be.
For, never more in happy dream
Will they float down life's sunny stream. ”

“ OW deep within each human heart,
A thousand treasured feelings lie;
Things precious, delicate, apart,
Too sensitive for human eye.
Our purest feelings, and our best,
Yet shrinking from the common view ”

“ Fresh from the Jumna’s shining sands;Ruins on the Jumna
And golden grapes, whose bloom and hue
Wear morning light and morning dew,
Or purple with the deepest dye
That flushes evening’s farewell sky.
And in the slender vases glow—
Vases that seem like sculptur'd snow—
The rich sherbets are sparkling bright
With ruby and with amber light. ”

“ And yet I listen on—
And say them to myself again,
Long after thou art gone.
I make myself my own deceit,
I know it is a dream,
But one that from my earliest youth
Has coloured life’s deep stream ”

“ Not a wish remains for me.
Not a wish! beat not my heart,
Thou hast bade thy dreams depart;
They have past, but left behind
Weary spirit, wasted mind.
Ah! if this old charm were sooth,
One wish yet might tax its truth ”

“ It is a glorious task to seek,
Where misery droops the patient head:
Where tears are on the widow’s cheek,
Where weeps the mourner o’er the dead.
These are the moments when the heart
Turns from a world no longer dear ”

“ I have seen many young people immolate love on the shrine of mutual affection—but it is the reckless sacrifice I have witnessed this morning, that has induced my thoughts to take the more tangible shape of words. ”

“ That chased such dream away.
Now, out upon this foolishness,
Thy heart it is not mine;
And, knowing this, how can I waste
My very soul on thine?
Alas! I have no power to choose,
Love is not at my will ”

“ The doomed to drink from life’s dark spring,
Whose golden bowl has long been gone.
Aye, weep for those, the weary, worn,
The bound to earth by some vain tie;
Some lingering love, some fond regret,
Who loathe to live, yet fear to die. ”

“ Earth to its trouble, man to his thrall;
Out upon morning, it chases the night,
With all the sweet dreams that on slumber alight;
Out upon morning, which wakes us to life,
With its toil, its repining, its sorrow and strife. ”

“ Were homes where Naiades met some graceful youth
Beneath the moonlit heaven—all this is past;
Ours is a darker and a sadder age;
Heaven help us through it!—’tis a weary world
The dust and ashes of a happier time. ”

“ And anxiously the maiden strains her long-expecting eyes
And fancies she can catch the light far flashing from the sword,
And see the silver crescents raised, of him, the Mogul lord.
"She stands upon a lofty tower, and gazes o’er the plain:
Alas! that eyes so beautiful, should turn on heaven in vain.
’Tis but a sudden storm whose weight is darkening on the air,
The lightning sweeps the hill, but shows no coming warriors there.
"Yet crimson as the morning ray, she wears the robe of pride
That binds the gallant Humaioon, a brother, to her side ”

“ It was a sweet pretty place, quite removed from the high-road, with a porch hung with honeysuckle, roses that looked in at the window, and a garden "well stocked with fruit-trees and vegetables:" here, I thought, I may copy Wordsworth, and enjoy
"The harvest of a quiet eye,
That sleeps and broods on its own heart." ”

“ Now, a love match is like that childish toy which consists of various boxes enclosed one within another, and yet contains nothing, after all. I wonder where Experience got its reputation?—it has been very easily obtained—but it does not deserve it: they say, that it teaches fools; it may teach them, but they do not learn. ”

“ With hopes turned 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. ”

“ HERE are very many devices wherewith we delude ourselves—indeed, human life has never seemed to me any thing more than a series of mistakes. It is a mistake to be born—another to live—and a third to die. ”

“ Then the young Kishen Kower wandered through the green bowers,
That sheltered the bloom of the island of flowers;
Where a fair summer palace arose mid the shade,
Which a thousand broad trees for the noon-hour had made.
Far around spread the hills with their varying hue,
From the deepest of purple to faintest of blue ”

“ Can this be the doom of the young and the proud!
’Tis over—the traitors are left on the tree!
One sits ’neath their shadow, her head on her knee;
A cloak o’er the face of the mourner is spread,
They raise it to look—and they look on the dead. ”

“ People ought to be grateful: I have done a great deal for the poets; is there not one among them to do something for me? I entreat them to recollect that I have read them, which is a great deal; I have bought them, which is still more; and I have reduced their theory to practice, which is most of all. They owe me a recompense, and I have a plan in my head. I want one of them to come and commit suicide in my garden, and leave a paper behind requesting to be interred in that very spot. ”

“ ERTAINLY when one is young, one is taught a great deal of useful knowledge; why it is called useful, I can’t tell; it has never been of any use to me: but among other things which I then learnt by heart, is a piece of ancient history. ”

“ Its falsehoods, and its fantasies—its noise,
And the unkindly hurry of the crowd,
’Mid whom my days are numbered! I would watch
The tremulous vibration of the rays
The moon sends down to kiss thy quiet waves ”

“ A destructive war was the consequence, for marriage with the one must incur the enmity of the other. A weak father, and an ambitious minister, led to the immolation of the beautiful victim; an unmarried daughter being held to be the greatest possible disgrace. ”

“ Wore truer faith than now—a carved stone
Is in a little ancient church which stands
Mid yonder trees, ’tis now almost defaced;
But careful eye may trace the mould’ring lines,
And kind tradition has preserv’d the tale ”

“ Quarrels are only the refreshing necessities of married life: but for their valuable aid, a whole city, like that in the Arabian Nights, might get up some fine summer morning, and find itself turned into stone. ”

“ Plato ordained that poetry should not be permitted in his republic. I wish I had lived under such a well-regulated government, I had not then been the victim of an over-excited imagination. Some persons have had their happiness destroyed by their wives; others by their children; others, a still more numerous class, by their creditors. Mine has been destroyed by poetry. ”

“ never is that cherished face
Banished from its accustomed place—
It shines upon my weariest night
It leads me on in thickest fight:
⁠* Shere Shah's Tomb—is situate at Sasseram, in the centre of a tank of water, about a mile in circumference. ”

“ Drooped o’er the walls its panoply,
⁠* Bejapore.—"A more remarkable example of the vanity of all human grandeur, or of the short continuance of human power, than this desolate place affords, cannot, perhaps, be met with in the whole world. Its architectural remains may vie in size, magnificence, and beauty, with those nations that have been longest established upon earth; while the actual existence of its dominions scarcely doubles the period of time to which a man's natural life extends in these days. ”

“ Such was the colour—when her cheek
Spoke what the lip might never speak.
The crimson flush which could confess
All that we hoped—but dared not guess.
That blush which through the world is known
To love, and to the rose alone—
A sweet companionship, which never
The poet’s dreaming eye may sever. ”

“ I say nothing of your matches of convenience, for I do not understand how any thing in existence can be other than inconvenient; nor of your marriage for money, as money, like patriotism, is an excuse for every thing ”

“ Why comes he not, that chieftain vow’d, to this her hour of need?
Has honour no devotedness? Has chivalry no speed?
"The Rajpoot’s daughter gazes round, she sees the plain afar,
Spread shining to the sun, which lights no trace of coming war. ”

“ "What though our passing day but be
A bubble on eternity;
Small though the circle is, yet still
’Tis ours to colour at our will. ”

“ Where are the warriors who once wont to stand
The glory and rampart of Rajahstan’s land?
Ask of the hills for their young and their brave,
They will point to the valleys beneath as their grave.‖
The mother sits pale by her desolate hearth,
And weeps o’er the infant an orphan from birth ”

“ The death of a warrior is only announced to his family by branches of the peepul-tree strewed before his door. ↑ ⁠* The Ghurrie is a sort of gong, on which the hour is struck when the brazen cup fills, and sinks down in the water of the vessel on which it floats. ”

“ She has flung her on earth, to despair and to die.
But a lamp is yet burning in one dismal room,
Young princess; where now is thy morning of bloom?
Ah, ages, long ages, have passed in a breath,
And life’s bitter knowledge has heralded death.
At the edge of the musnud* [5] she bends on her knee,
While her eyes watch the face of the stern Chand Baee.† [6]
Proud, beautiful, fierce; while she gazes, the tone
Of those high murky features grows almost her own ”

“ The chieftain to whom the Raki (anglicé , bracelet) was sent, became bound to the service of some unknown dame, whose bright eyes could dispense no reward, inasmuch as he was never to see them, the "bracelet-bound brother," and his adopted sister, never holding any intercourse. Humaioon accepted this gage from Kurnavati, the princess of Cheetore, and at her summons abandoned his nearly completed conquest of Bengal, and flew to succour, or at least avenge. ↑ ⁠* The Kandjar.—The Kandjar is a small poniard, set with gems, worn in the girdle of royal females, as a sign of their rank. ”

“ Oh sun, how glad thy rays are shed;
How canst thou glory o’er the dead?
Ah, folly this of human pride,
What are the dead to one like thee,
Whose mirror is the mighty tide,
Where time flows to eternity?
A single race, a single age,
What are they in thy pilgrimage? ”