Works By Letitia Elizabeth Landon

"One goes out visiting for pleasure ; a fallacy belonging to that melancholy mania for change which has recourse to stage-coaches, and steam-boats, as if change of scene were change of self."

"— good news stops to take breath on the road ; bad news never requires it."

"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. He might assign any reason his imagination suggested, and I would take care that religious attention should be paid to his last wish ; indeed, it is for that I desire his death."

"Alas ! hope is not prophecy,—we dream, But rarely does the glad fulfilment come : We leave our land and we return no more; Or come again, the weary and the worn."

"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."

"Thou lone and lovely water, would I were A dweller by thy deepest solitude !"

"How little is the happiness That will content a child— A favourite dog, a sunny fruit, A blossom growing wild. A word will fill the little heart With pleasure and with pride ; It is a harsh, a cruel thing, That such can be denied."

"How much they suffer from our faults ! How much from our mistakes ! How often, too, mistaken zeal An infant’s misery makes ! We overrule, and overteach, We curb and we confine, And put the heart to school too soon, To learn our narrow line."

"The morning waked with carols, A young and joyous hand Of small and rosy songsters, Came tripping hand in hand. And sang beneath our windows, Just as the round red sun Began to melt the hoar-frost, And the clear cold day begun."

"History hath but few pages—soon is told Man’s ordinary life, Labour, and care, and strife, Make up the constant chronicle of old."

"We have no home—we have no friends, They said our home no more was ours ; Our cottage where the ash tree bends, The garden we had filled with flowers. . . . . Alas, it is a weary thing To sing our ballads o’er and o’er ; The songs we used at home to sing— Alas, we have a home no more !"

"I have a steed, to leave behind The wild bird, and the wilder wind : I have a sword, which does not know How to waste a second blow : I have a matchlock, whose red breath Bears the lightning’s sudden death ; I have a foot of fiery flight, I have an eye that cleaves the night. I win my portion in the land By my high heart and strong right hand."

"Filled with the sweet good-night of flowers that sigh themselves to sleep,"

"Is there a spot where Pity’s foot, Although unsandalled, fears to tread, A silence where her voice is mute, Where tears, and only tears, are shed? It is the desolated home Where Hope was yet a recent guest, Where Hope again may never come, Or come, and only speak of rest."

"Then sounds arise, the echoes bear along Through the resounding aisles the choral song. The billowy music of the organ sweeps, Like the vast anthem of uplifted deeps ; The bells ring forth—the long dark night is done, The sunshine of the Sabbath is begun."

"Cold and obscure, in vain the king and sage Gave law and learning to the darkened age. There was no present faith, no future hope, Earth bounded then the earth-drawn horoscope ;"

"—O, tranquil earth and heaven—but their repose, What influence hath it on the mourner there ! Her eye is fix’d in terrible despair, Her lip is white with pain, and, spectre-like, Her shape is worn with famine—on her arm Rests a dead child—she does not weep for it. Two more are at her side, she’d weep for them, But that she is too desperate to weep :"

"Black and more black the midnight grew, Black and more black was the water’s hue ; Then a ghastly sound on the silence broke, And I thought of the dead beneath the oak."

"What know we of them ? Nothing—there they stand, Gloomy as night, inscrutible as fate."

"Time—tempest—warfare—ordinary decay, Is not for these. The memory of man Has lost their rise—although they are his work. Two senses here are present ; one of Power, And one of Nothingness ; doth it not mock The mighty mind to see the meaner part, The task it taught its hands, outlast itself?"

"The stately stranger’s head was bound With a bright and golden round; Curiously inlaid, each scale Shone upon his glittering mail;"

"Who has not, when but a child, Treasured up some vision wild: Haunting them with nameless fear, Filling all they see or hear, In the midnight’s lonely hour, With a strange mysterious power?"

"Then his jealous fancies rose, (Our Lady keep the mind from those!) Like a fire within the brain, Maddens that consuming pain. Henceforth is no rest by night, Henceforth day has no delight. Life hath agonies that tell Of their late left native hell. But mid their despair is none Like that of the jealous one."

"Come what will, of weal or wo, ’Tis the best the worst to know."

"She leaves it to the sacred stream, She leaves it to the tide, Her little child—her darling one, And she has none beside."

"She comes ! So comes the Moon, when has she found A silvery path wherein through heaven to glide ? Fling the white veil—a summer cloud—around ; She is a bride !"

"Alas ! for our ancient believings, We have nothing now left to believe ; The oracle, augur, and omen No longer dismay and deceive."

"Thou beautiful new comer, With white and maiden brow ; Thou fairy gift from summer, Why art thou blooming now ? This dim and sheltered alley Is dark with winter green ; Not such as in the valley At sweet spring-time is seen."

"A stranger to her forest home, That fair young stranger came; They raised for him the funeral song— For him the funeral flame. Love sprang from pity,—and her arms Around his arms she threw; She told her father, “If he dies, Your daughter dieth too.” For her sweet sake they set him free— He lingered at her side; And many a native song yet tells Of that pale stranger’s bride."

"None watched the lonely Indian girl,— She passed unmarked of all, Until they saw her slight canoe Approach the mighty Fall! Upright, within that slender boat They saw the pale girl stand, Her dark hair streaming far behind— Uprais’d her desperate hand. The air is filled with shriek and shout— They call, but call in vain; The boat amid the waters dash'd— ’Twas never seen again!"

"For years, long years, Years that make centuries—those dimlit aisles, Where rainbows play, from coloured windows flung, Have echoed to the voice of prayer and praise ; With the last lights of evening flitting round, Making a rosy atmosphere of hope."

"Few save the poor feel for the poor, The rich know not how hard It is to be of needful food And needful rest debarred."

"Sympathy is the softener of death, and memory of the loved and the lost is the earthly shadow of their immortality. But who turns aside amid those crowds that hurry through the thronged and noisy streets?—No one can love London better than I do; but never do I wish to be buried there. It is the best place in the world for a house, and the worst for a grave."

"I come from my home in the depth of the sea, I come that thy dreams may be haunted by me ; Not as we parted, the rose on my brow, But shadowy, silent, I visit thee now."

"You must come back, my brother, For Christmas is so near, And Christmas is the crowning time, The purple of the year ;"

"She comes with the midnight—meet not her cold eye, It shines but on those who are fated to die. She comes with the midnight, when spirits have power— She comes with the midnight, and evil the hour."

"For the present doth inherit All the glories of the past ; We retain what was its spirit, While its dust to dust is cast, All good angels guard the sleep Of the ancient warriors, The warriors of olden time"

"Life in its many shapes was there, The busy and the gay; Faces that seemed too young and fair To ever know decay. …. There came a slow and silent band In sad procession by: Reversed the musket in each hand, And downcast every eye. They bore the soldier to his grave; The sympathising crowd Divided like a parted wave By some dark vessel ploughed. …. Again, all filled with light and breath, I passed the crowded street— Oh, great extremes of life and death, How strangely do ye meet!"

"Human heart this history Is thy fated lot, Even such thy watching For what cometh not Till with anxious waiting dull Round thee fades the beautiful."

"Again I am beside the lake, The lonely lake which used to be The wide world of the beating heart, When I was, love, with thee."

"They were poor, and by their cabin, Pale want sat at the door ; And the summer to their harvest Brought insufficient store."

"How many are the lovely lays That haunt our English tongue, Defrauded of their poet’s praise Forgotten he who sung."

"And such a task it is to steer A people in their high career, When old opinions war, and change Is sudden, violent, and strange ; And men recall the past, to say, So shall not be the coming day."

"... old bachelors are fond of young girls, under the idea that they can manage them the best"

"... everybody was much more pleased than people are in general with any lions, who are also exotics, to whom they condescend to be attentive, but refuse to be friendly; rejoicing when any little conventional informality reduces the genius, whose patent of nobility the Creator himself has bestowed, below the level of fashion, and substituting ridicule for admiration, the smile of the scorner for the approval of veneration."

"No person of fashion ever laughs out from the impulse of the heart,"

"What a life for a free man, born to the use of dogs and horses, pure air, and wide-spreading moors! — no wonder that, although junior partner, and as modest as he was high-spirited, he trod his counting-house floor with a step vigorous and springy as the young captain of a man-of-war, for he felt that he was an emancipated slave; nay, more, a British merchant. If not "monarch of all he surveyed," he was certainly monarch of all he desired, which is probably more than any one of those mighty personages who rule mankind could have honestly asserted."

"The possession of beauty leads to an overweening admiration of it, and wealth gives a power of preserving this boon of nature in a manner forbidden to the poor, which will account fully for the extreme and perhaps blameable solicitude a few continue to feel on the subject."

"And no ring, if it does wither its circle, withers so utterly as a golden one. With only the false criterion of courtship to judge by, the wedded pair expect too much from each other ; and those who should make the most, make the least allowance. Tastes differ, tempers jar, trifles become important — as the grain of sand, which, nothing in itself, yet, gathered together, sweeps over the fertile plain, leaving no sign that there ever was blossom or fruit. The scar, which would soon pass, did distance or time intervene, can not heal from hourly irritation, One quarrel brings the memory of its predecessor, and grievances and mortifications are treasured up for perpetual reference. Too late, each finds out how utterly unsuited either is to the other ; they have not a feeling, a taste, or an opinion in common."

"... the horizon of matrimony is only seen through a glass, and that darkly, if the experience of others be the glass by which we make our observations."