Letitia Elizabeth Landon

“ Seems little, like to-day,
And we find life's deepest sorrow
Melts gradual away;
Yet do not quite forget me,
Though our love be o'er;
Let gentle dreams regret me
When we shall meet no more. ”

“ A day may be a destiny; for life
Lives in but little—but that little teems
With some one chance, the balance of all time:
A look—a word—and we are wholly changed.
We marvel at ourselves—we would deny
That which is working in the hidden soul ”

“ The harvest of the summer-rose is spread,
But lip and cheek with her have lost their red;
Theirs is the paleness of the soul's consuming—
Fretfully day by day
In sorrow worn away;
Youth, joy, and bloom have no more sure entombing. ”

“ Of nature and of spring,
With all that gives thee pleasure,
My heart to thine shall cling.
The rose shall be enchanted
To breathe of love to thee;
All fair things shall be haunted
With vows of faith for me. ”

“ Where nature has squander'd
Her fairest and best.
Yet the wild winds have brought from the Baltic afar
That vessel of slaughter, that lord of the war.
He saw his chiefs stooping,
But not unto him;
The stately form drooping,
The flashing eye dim.
The wind from the nor'erd
Swept past, fierce and free;
It hurried them forward,
They knew not the sea;
And a foe track'd their footsteps more stern than the tide—
The plague was among them—they sicken'd and died.
Left last, and left lonely,
Earl Harold remain'd;
One captive—one only
Life's burden sustain'd ”

“ Keep the heart glad with natural devotion.
'Tis a true, sweet lesson; for, in life's actual harvest,
Much we need the flowers that mingle with our labours.
Pleasures, pure and simple, recall us to their Giver;
For ever, in its joy, does the full heart think of Heaven. ”

“ The song is silent so sweet yesterday,
And not a green leaf lingers on the spray.
We mock ourselves with freedom and with hope
The while our feet glide down life's faithless slope [1]
One has no strength, the other has no scope. ”

“ May we deny or mitigate it—never!
And what art thou to me,—thou who dost wake
The mind's still depths with trouble and repining?
Nothing;—though all things now thy likeness take;
Nothing,—and life has nothing worth resigning. ”

“ Yet, false one, farewell!
I have still enough pride;
Though hopeless to quell,
Yet at least it can hide.
But, ah! may an hour
Be waiting for thee—
When Love, in his power,
Shall avenge him for me! ”

“ Lovely is the green earth—she knows the hour is holy;
Starry are the heavens, lit with eternal joy;
Light like their own is dawning sweet and slowly
O'er the fair and sculptured forehead of that yet dreaming boy. ”

“ The last fair angel lingering on our earth;
The shadow of what thought obscures the vision.
⁠We might have been!
A cold fatality attends on love,
Too soon or else too late the heart-beat quickens ”

“ The dear old garden! There is now remaining,
As little of its bloom as rests with me.
Thy only memory is this sad complaining,
Mourning that never more for us can be
⁠The old, old times,
⁠The dear old times. ”

“ Its strife with the main,
And the blue sky is breaking
Thro' clouds and thro' rain:
They can see the fair island whereon they are thrown,
Where the palms and the spice-groves rise lovely and lone. ”

“ Never was more noble motto for all human achievement; and it was from a lofty purpose that the Macedonians turned back on the banks of the Hyphasis. But it is the same with all mortal enterprise: nothing is, in this world, carried out to its complete fulfilment. Our mortality predominates in a world only meant to be a passage to another. ”

“ Which seem to ask—Why are we thus neglected?
It is the still despair
Of passion forced to bear
Its deep and tender offering rejected.
Poor girl! her soul is heavy with the past;
Around the shades of night are falling fast ”

“ There is something singularly fine in Alexander's appeal to his army, when the Indian world lay before them, but more present to their fears than to their hopes. "For my own part," said the ardent conqueror, "I recognise no limits to the labours of a high-spirited man but the failure of adequate objects." ”

“ We know not of its presence, though its power
Be on the gradual round of every hour,
Now flinging down an empire, now a flower. ”