Letitia Elizabeth Landon

“ Amid wealth, and power, and glory,
It is best to die,
⁠Unto all that answer came.
From the highest to the lowest
Life draws deep a wasted breath:
Fate! thy best boon thou bestowest
When thou givest death. ”

“ A mouth that is itself a rose,
And scatters roses too;
An eye that borrows from the sky
Its sunshine and its blue;
A laugh, an echo from the song
The lark at morning sings;
A voice — but that has sadder tones,
And tells of tenderer things ”

“ Scarcely does she seek to smother
Change and scornful pride;
She is thinking of another,
With him at her side;—
⁠He has had his day!
Love has darken'd into hate,
And her falsehood is his fate. ”

“ Mid its wide green leaves;
And the rose, sweet guest, was bidden,
While its breath receives
⁠Freshness from the unshed dews.
Nothing marks the youth of these—
One bright face is all he sees. ”

“ Conjures the past before me, till it grows
More actual than the present: that—I see
But with the common eyes of daily life,
Imperfect and impatient; but the past
Out of imagination works its truth,
And grows distinct with poetry. ”

“ Little did he deem
⁠Of such passion and such power;
When there hangs a life's emotion
On a word—a breath—
Like the storm upon the ocean,
Bearing doom and death.
⁠Youth has only one such hour ”

“ And the wreath'd Corinthian column
Guardeth their array.
⁠Lovely that acanthus wreath,
Drooping round the graceful girth:
All the fairest things of earth,
Art's creations have their birth—
⁠Still from love and death. ”

“ We must feel to think.
Care and toil had flung their shade
Over that bright head, now laid
By the river's brink.
Youth that, like a fever, burns;
Struggle, scorning what it earns;
Knowledge, loathing as it learns ”

“ I send back thy letters:
Ah! would I could send
The memory that fetters,
The dreams that must end.
I send back thy tresses,
Thy long raven hair;
Could I send thy caresses,
They too should be there. ”

“ While the Roman maid was woo'd,
While she was won.
In the pines, a soft bewailing
Stirr'd the fringed leaves,
Like a lute whose song is failing,
Loving, while it grieves
⁠So to die upon the wind. ”

“ All life's loveliest feelings grew
Round that lovely one;—
Thus was the bright Nina woo'd,
Thus was she won.
Ah! the glorious mind's aspiring
Needeth some repose—
Some sweet object for desiring,
Where its wings may close. ”

“ Not a shade but her's to keep.
⁠Yet I said, 'tis best to be
⁠Free—and I again was free.
But there came a lovelier one;
She undid all they had done:
I loved—I love her—ah, how well!
Language has no power to tell. ”

“ The New Monthly Magazine, Volume 48, Pages 20 to 25
(20)
SUBJECTS FOR PICTURES.
BY L. E. L.
I. Calypso watching the Ocean.
Years, years have pass'd away,
Since to yonder fated bay
⁠Did the Hero come.
Years, years, have pass'd the while
Since he left the lovely isle
⁠For his Grecian home.
He is with the dead—but She
Weepeth on eternally
In the lone and lovely island
Mid the far off southern seas.
Downwards floateth her bright hair,
Fair—how exquisitely fair! ”

“ During Alexander the Great's illness, Peithou, Attalus, Demophon, Peucestas, Cleomenes, Minedas, and Seleucus, slept in the Temple of Serapis, and asked the god if it would be desirable and better for Alexander to be conveyed to the temple, and to supplicate the god, and be healed by him. ”