Letitia Elizabeth Landon

“ These words, I know, are fanciful; yet who would not but trace
A history of gentle thoughts upon that lovely face!
For, if not all reality, at least, such well may seem,
And, even with our own actual life, what is it but a dream? ”

“ Not the calm beauty of a woodland world,
Fraught with sweet idleness and minstrel-dreams;
But beauty which awakes the intellect
More than the feelings; that of power and mind–-
Man's power, man's mind—for never city raised
A prouder or a fairer brow than Venice,
The daughter and the mistress of the sea.
Far spread the ocean, but it spread to bear
Her galleys o'er its depths, for war or wealth.
And raised upon foundations, which have robbed
The waters of its birthright, stand her halls. ”

“ Man's destiny is not in his own hands.
Cities and nations, each are in their turn
The mighty sacrifice which Time demands,
And offers up at the eternal throne—
Signs of man's weakness and man's vanity.
⁠* Lord Byron, in one of his letters, alludes to the numberless splendid pictures mouldering in the Venetian palaces, whose inhabitants refuse to sell the portraits of their ancestors, almost the sole memorials of their former splendour. ”

“ A whole life's bitterness is in the song
Whose words, too truly, are the singer's own.
⁠Fragment of Corinne's Song at Naples.
"Thus, shrinking from the desert spread around,
Doth Genius wander through the world, and finds
No likeness to himself—no echo given
By Nature: and the common crowd but hold
As madness that desire of the rapt soul
Which finds not in this world enough of air,
Of high enthusiasm, or of hope!
For Destiny compels exalted minds ”

“ Which seeks upon this weary earth
The love that it may never find.
For, though upon an eagle's wing
The spirit for a while may roam,
The pinions need some gentler tie,
The heavenward wanderer asks a home ”