Letitia Elizabeth Landon

“ That owns not to itself it loves, until that love is known,
By feeling in the wide, wide world so utterly alone.
No face seem'd pleasant to her sight, one image linger'd there,
The echo of one only voice was on the haunted air.
Speak not of other sorrow, life knoweth not such pain,
As that within the stricken heart, which loves, and loves in vain.
Yet she, too, at the altar gave up her wan cold hand,
That shudder'd as they circle it with an unwelcome band;
Ah! crime and misery both, the heart—on such a die to set,
The veriest mockery of love is striving to forget. ”

“ But the boy springs up to manhood, the girl to woman grows,
So the sapling gives the oak tree, the bud becomes the rose;
Alas! for childhood, leaving its fairy land behind—
The green grass dies with summer, so fares it with the mind. ”