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Letitia Elizabeth Landon

British poet and novelist (1802–1838)

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (August 14, 1802 – October 15, 1838) was an English poet and novelist, better known by her initials L. E. L. She was one of the richest sources of epigrams in the early nineteenth century and one reviewer compared her to Rochefoucauld. Sometimes she adopts an adversarial role, giving contradictory viewpoints. Some of her thoughts recur, either developed or refined, but over time she also threw out differing opinions on some subjects; changeability, she argues, is one of our principal traits and, as she has one character remark, truth is like the philosopher's stone, a thing not to be discovered.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
See also
Romance and Reality
Francesca Carrara
Ethel Churchill (or The Two Brides)
Lady Anne Granard (or Keeping up Appearances)
Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Books 1832-39

Quotes

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The Fate of Adelaide (1821)

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  • Romantic Switzerland! thy scenes are traced
    With characters of strange wild loveliness,
    Beauty and desolation, side by side;
    Here lofty rocks uprise, where nature seems
    To dwell alone in silent majesty;
    Rob'd by the snow, her stately palace fram'd
    Of the white hills; towering in all their pride,
    The frost's gigantic mounds are lost in clouds,
    Like to vast castles rear'd in middle air.
    The ice has sculptur'd too strange imagery—
    Obelisks, columns, spires, fantastic piles;
    Some like the polish'd marble, others clear
    As the rock crystal, others sparkling with
    The hues that melt along the sunborn bow.
    • Canto I, I opening lines
  • And o'er them lowers destruction, high in air,
    Upon those jutting crags, whose rugged sides,
    Riven in fragments, and like ruins pil'd,
    Seem as that giants of those ancient days
    When earthborn creatures braved th' Olympic Gods,
    Those of whom fable tells, had torn away
    Rocks from their solid base, and with strong arm,
    Parted the mountains: there the avalanche hangs,
    Mighty, but tremulous; just a light breath
    Will loosen it from off its airy throne;
    Then down it hurls in wrath, like to the sound
    Of thunder amid storms, or as the voice
    Of rushing waters—death in its career.
    • Canto I, I
  • Methinks adieu
    Is cold, when uttered with aught else but tears.
    • Canto I, XI
  • Hope, frail but lovely shadow ! thou dost come,
    Like a bright vision on our pathway here,
    Making the gloomy future beautiful,
    And gilding our horizon with a light,
    The fairest human eye can ever know.
    • Canto I, XIII
  • Once more my harp awakens ; once again,
    Tho' all unworthy be my hand to twine
    Th' etherial blossomings of poetry,
    I would call forth its numbers, yet would feel
    Its music fall like sunlight on my soul.
    • Canto II, I
  • ... absence is
    The moonlight of affection ;
    • Canto II, II
  • Alas ! alas ! too often conscience sleeps,
    When pleasure's syren numbers lull its rest.—
    • Canto II, VIII
  • The leaves were gone from all, save where the pine
    Threw the wide shadow of its unchang'd green.
    I could not envy it that fadeless state.—
    Ah ! who would be the last, the only one
    That ruin spares—no ; if the blight must pass
    O'er all around, let it pass o'er me too !
    • Canto II, X
  • 'Tis soothing, oh ! most soothing to the heart,
    To rove 'mid scenes where once we have been blest!
    Each tree, each blossom, has a thrilling charm;
    They seem memorials of those happier hours :
    The very sigh that tells they are no more,
    Is sweet unto the spirit; former days,
    And former feelings, rise upon the soul,
    Dear as they once have been.
    • Canto II, XII
  • ... Oh! burning are the drops
    That wounded love will shed—like to the dew
    Falling from off the poison tree, the blight
    Still following the touch ;—ah ! other tears
    Soften and bless—but these destroy the heart.
    • Canto II, XVII
  • Thou, Poetry, in absence wert a chain,
    Binding our hearts together: where so well
    As in thy numbers, could I pour my soul,
    In soothing tenderness? 'twas bliss, to make
    Thought visible to those of whom I thought.
    • The Farewell
  • How innocent, how beautiful thy sleep !
    Sweet one, 'tis peace and joy to gaze on thee!
    • Sleeping Child
  • I Give thee, love, a blooming braid;
    I cull'd it at eve's 'witching hour ;
    I twin'd it in the moon's sweet shade,
    When starlight dew was on each flower.
    • Love’s Parting Wreath
  • You may smile at the fanciful structures I rear,
    And say, that my castles are built but on sand ;
    Like bubbles, that on the blue waters appear,
    That sparkle, invite, and then sink from the hand.
    • Castle Building
  • And you, my fine poet, who thought that the earth
    To another such minstrel could never give birth,
    Already your works are all thrown on the shelf,
    And their author condemn'd as an ignorant elf.—
    Yes ; look thro' the world, and this truth you will find
    That, once out of sight, you are soon out of mind.
    • Fable (Imitated from the French of La Motte.)

The Improvisatrice (1824)

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  • I am a daughter of that land,
    Where the poet's lip and the painter's hand
    Are most divine, —where the earth and sky,
    Are picture both and poetry—
    I am of Florence.
    • Title Poem
  • Statues but known from shapes of the earth,
    By being too lovely for mortal birth;
    Paintings whose colours of life were caught
    From the fairy tints in the rainbow wrought;
    Music whose sighs had a spell like those
    That float on the sea at the evening's close
    Language so silvery, that every word
    Was like the lute's awakening chord;
    • Title Poem
  • My power was but a woman's power;
    Yet, in that great and glorious dower
    Which Genius gives, I had my part:
    I poured my full and burning heart
    • Title Poem
  • But Love's bright fount is never pure;
    And all his pilgrims must endure
    All passion's mighty suffering
    Ere they may reach the blessed spring.
    • Title Poem
  • It was my evil star above,
    Not my sweet lute, that wrought me wrong;
    It was not song that taught me love,
    But it was love that taught me song.
    • Title Poem
  • There are a thousand fanciful things
    Linked round the young heart's imaginings.
    In its first love-dream, a leaf or a flower
    Is gifted then with a spell and a power:
    A shade is an omen, a dream is a sign,
    From which the maiden can well divine
    Passion's whole history.
    • Title Poem
  • It is most sad to watch the fall
    Of autumn leaves!--but worst of all
    It is to watch the flower of spring
    Faded in its fresh blossoming!
    • Title Poem
  • I loved him as young Genius loves,
    When its own wild and radiant heaven
    Of starry thought burns with the light,
    The love, the life, by passion given.
    I loved him, too, as woman loves--
    Reckless of sorrow, sin, or scorn:
    Life had no evil destiny
    That, with him, I could not have borne!
    • Title Poem
  • It is a night of summer,—and the sea
    Sleeps, like a child, in mute tranquillity.
    Soft o'er the deep-blue wave the moonlight breaks;
    Gleaming, from out the white clouds of its zone,
    • Rosalie.
  • Then they were silent:—words are little aid
    To Love, whose deepest vows are ever made
    By the heart's beat alone. Oh, silence is
    Love's own peculiar eloquence of bliss!
    • Rosalie.
  • How very desolate that breast must be,
    Whose only joyance is in memory!
    And what must woman suffer, thus betrayed?—
    Her heart's most warm and precious feelings made
    But things wherewith to wound: that heart—so weak,
    So soft—laid open to the vulture's beak!
    • Rosalie.
  • It must be worth a life of toil and care,—
    Worth those dark chains the wearied one must bear
    Who toils up fortune's steep,—all that can wring
    The worn-out bosom with lone-suffering,—
    Worth restlessness, oppression, goading fears,
    And long-deferred hopes of many years,—
    To reach again that little quiet spot,
    So well loved once, and never quite forgot;—
    To trace again the steps of infancy,
    And catch their freshness from their memory!
    • Rosalie.
  • There was a grave just closed. Not one seemed near,
    To pay the tribute of one long—last tear!
    How very desolate must that one be,
    Whose more than grave has not a memory!
    • Rosalie.
  • I do love violets:
    They tell the history of woman's love;
    They open with the earliest breath of spring;
    Lead a sweet life of perfume, dew, and light;
    And, if they perish, perish with a sigh
    Delicious as that life.
    • Roland's Tower
  • Love is like the glass,
    That throws its own rich colour over all,
    And makes all beautiful.
    • Roland's Tower
  • Delicious tears! the heart's own dew.
    • The Guerilla Chief
  • 'Tis something, if in absence we can see
    The footsteps of the past:—it soothes the heart
    To breathe the air scented in other years
    By lips beloved; to wander through the groves
    Where once we were not lonely,—
    • The Guerilla Chief
  • And the hall is lone, and the hall is drear,
    For the smiling of woman shineth not here.
  • The loorie brought to his cinnamon nest.
    The bee from the midst of its honey quest,
    And open the leaves of the lotus lay
    To welcome the noon of the summer day.
  • Yet gazed MANDALLA on the square
    As she he sought still glided there,—
    Oh that fond look, whose eyeballs' strain,
    And will not know its look is vain!
    At length he turned,—his silent mood
    Sought that impassioned solitude,
    The Eden of young hearts, when first
    Love in its loneliness is nurst.
  • An Alma girl! oh shame, deep shame,
    To Brahma's race and Brahma's name!
    Unmarked, unpitied, she turned aside,
    For a moment her bursting tears to hide.
    None thought of the Bayadere, till the fire
    Blazed redly and fiercely the funeral pyre,
    Then like a thought she darted by,
    And sprang on the burning pile to die!
    • The Bayadere from The London Literary Gazette (30th August, 6th and 13th September 1823)
  • Death's a fearful thing when we must count its steps!
  • How many glorious structures we had raised
    Upon Hope's sandy basis!
    • St. George’s Hospital, Hyde Park Corner from London Literary Gazette (25th May 1822) Poetic Sketches. Second Series - Sketch the Fourth
  • It is a sweet, albeit most painful, feeling
    To know we are regretted.
  • His cheek was pale as marble, and as cold;
    But his lip trembled not, and his dark eyes
    Glanced proudly round. But when they bared his breast
    For the death-shot, and took a portrait thence,
    He clenched his hands, and gasped, and one deep sob
    Of agony burst from him; and he hid
    His face awhile—his mother's look was there.
    He could not steel his soul when he recalled
    The bitterness of her despair. It passed—
    That moment of wild anguish; he knelt down;
    That sunbeam shed its glory over one,
    Young, proud, and brave, nerved in deep energy;
    The next fell over cold and bloody clay. . . .
    • The Deserter from The London Literary Gazette (8th June 1822) Poetic Sketches. Second Series - Sketch the Sixth
  • How I pity those whose childhood has been unhappy! to them one of the sweetest springs of feeling has been utterly denied, the most green and beautiful part of life laid waste.
  • Thrice hallowed shrine
    Of the heart's intercourse, our own fireside!
    • Gladesmuir from The London Literary Gazette (14th September 1822) Poetical Sketches. Third series - Sketch the Second
  • Oh, all
    Know love is woman's happiness.
  • Hope is love's happiness, but not its life;—
    How many hearts have nourished a vain flame
    In silence and in secret, though they knew
    They fed the scorching fire that would consume them!
  • — a poet's love
    Is immortality!
    • The Minstrel of Portugal from The London Literary Gazette (21st September 1822)
  • All, lingering, stayed to gaze
    Upon this Eden of the painter's art,
    And looking on its loveliness, forgot
    The crowded world around them!—
  • Ah! love is even more fragile than its gifts!
    A tress of raven hair:--oh, only those
    Whose souls have felt this one idolatry
    Can tell how precious is the slightest thing
    Affection gives and hallows.
  • Love, thou hast hopes like summers, short and bright,
    Moments of ecstasy, and maddening dreams,
    Intense delicious throbs!
    • The Basque girl and Henri Quatre from The London Literary Gazette (12th October 1822)
  • AND the muffled drum rolled on the air,
    Warriors with stately step were there;
    On every arm was the black crape bound,
    Every carbine was turned to the ground:
    Solemn the sound of their measured tread,
    As silent and slow they followed the dead.
    The riderless horse was led in the rear,
    There were white plumes waving over the bier:
    Helmet and sword were laid on the pall,
    For it was a soldier's funeral.
  • He knelt him down on the new-raised mound,
    His face was bowed on the cold damp ground,
    He raised his head, his tears were done,
    The father had prayed o'er his only son!
    • The Soldier's Funeral from The London Literary Gazette (16th November 1822)
  • I left my home, and I was left
    A stranger in his land, bereft
    Of even hope; there was not one
    Familiar face to look upon.—
    Their speech was strange.
  • I would not even have him weep
    O'er his Italian love's last sleep.
    Oh, tears are a most worthless token,
    When hearts they would have soothed are broken.
    • The Painter's Love from The London Literary Gazette (14th December 1822)
  • The lines were fill'd with many a tender thing,
    All the impassion'd heart's fond communing.
    • Written under a Picture of a Girl Burning a Love Letter from The London Literary Gazette (16th November 1822) Fragments in Rhyme II - Lines Written under a Picture of a Girl Burning a Love Letter
  • What is the light of a poet's name,
    If it is not his country that hallows his fame?
    Where may he look for guerdon so fair
    As the honour and praise that await him there?
    His name will be lost and his grave forgot,
    If the tears of his country preserve them not! . . .
  • He sung,—the notes at first were low,
    Like the whispers of love, or the breathings of woe:
    The waters were hushed, and the winds were stay'd,
    As he sang his farewell to his Lesbian maid!
    • Arion from The London Literary Gazette (23rd November 1822) Fragments in Rhyme IV
  • Pillowed on a lotus flower,
    Gathered in a summer hour,
    Rides he o'er the mountain wave
    Which would be a tall ship's grave!
    At his back his bow is slung,
    Sugar-cane, with wild bees strung,—
  • Yet one arrow has a power
    Lasting till life's latest hour--
    Weary day and sleepless night,
    Lightning gleams of fierce delight,
    Fragrant and yet poisoned sighs,
    Agonies and ecstasies;
    Hopes, like fires amid the gloom,
    Lighting only to consume!
  • Well may storm be on the sky,
    And the waters roll on high,
    When MANMADIN passes by.
    Earth below and heaven above
    Well may bend to thee, oh Love!
    • Manmadin, The Indian Cupid. Floating down the Ganges from The London Literary Gazette (14th December 1822) Fragments in Rhyme VII
  • Love is a pearl of purest hue,
    But stormy waves are round it;
    And dearly may a woman rue,
    The hour that she found it.
  • —for earth were too like heaven,
    If length of life to love were given.
  • Oh, fame is as the moon above,
    Whose sun of light and life is love.
    There is more in the smile of one gentle eye
    Then the thousand pages of history;
    Than the loudest plaudits the crowd can raise.
    Take the gems in glory's coronal,
    And one smile of beauty is worth them all.—
    • Inez from The London Literary Gazette (24th May 1823)
  • Violets! — deep-blue violets!
    April's loveliest coronets!
    There are no flowers grow in the vale,
    Kiss'd by the dew, wooed by the gale, —
    None by the dew of the twilight wet,
    So sweet as the deep-blue violet!
    • The Violet
  • But this is as a dream, — the plough has pass'd
    Where the stag bounded, and the day has looked
    On the green twilight of the forest-trees.
    This Oak has no companion ! - - - -
    • The Oak from The London Literary Gazette (19th April 1823) Fragments
  • They met with cold words, and yet colder looks:
    Each was changed in himself, and yet each thought
    The other only changed, himself the same.
    • Change from The London Literary Gazette (23rd August 1823)
  • He had a power; in his eye
    There was a quenchless energy,
    A spirit that could dare
    The deadliest form that Death could take,
    And dare it for the daring's sake.
    • Crescentius from The London Literary Gazette (19th July 1823) Execution of Crescentius
  • It is a gem which hath the power to show
    If plighted lovers keep their faith or no :
    If faithful, it is like the leaves of spring ;
    If faithless, like those leaves when withering.
    • The Emerald Ring — a Superstition from The London Literary Gazette (28th December 1822) Fragments in Rhyme XI
  • And this is Love! Oh! why should woman love;
    Wasting her dearest feelings, till health, hope,
    Happiness, are but things of which henceforth
    She'll only know the name?
    • Love
  • Love may be increased with fears,
    May be fanned with sighs,
    Nurst by fancies, fed by doubts
    But without Hope it dies!
    • Love, Hope and Beauty
  • The day is past, and the moonbeams weep
    O'er the many that rest in their last cold sleep;
    Near to the gashed and the nerveless hand
    Is the pointless spear and the broken brand;
    The archer lies like an arrow spent,
    His shafts all loose and his bow unbent;
    Many a white plume torn and red,
    Bright curls rent from the graceful head,
    Helmet and breast-plate scattered around,
    Lie a fearful show on the well-fought ground;
    While the crow and the raven flock overhead
    To feed on the hearts of the helpless dead,
    Save when scared by the glaring eye
    Of some wretch in his last death agony.
    • The Warrior from The London Literary Gazette (25th October 1823) Sketch
  • Oh, softest is the cheek's love-ray
    When seen by moonlight hours
    Other roses seek the day,
    But blushes are night flowers.
    • When Should Lover’s Breathe Their Vows from The London Literary Gazette (24th November 1821)

The Troubadour (1825)

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  • For his was now the loveliest part
    Of the young poet's life, when first,
    In solitude and silence nurst,
    His genius rises like a spring
    Unnoticed in its wandering;
    Ere winter cloud or summer ray
    Have chill'd, or wasted it away,
    • Canto I
  • Alas! for him whose youthful fire
    Is vowed and wasted on the lyre,—
    Alas! for him who shall essay,
    The laurel's long and dreary way!
    Mocking will greet, neglect will chill
    His spirit's gush, his bosom's thrill;
    And, worst of all, that heartless praise
    Echoed from what another says.
    • Canto I
  • 'Tis not for Spring to think on all
    The sear and waste of Autumn's fall: —
    • Canto I
  • Oh, where is there the heart but knows
    Love's first steps are upon the rose!
    • Canto I
  • Alas! that every lovely thing
    Lives only but for withering,—
    That spring rainbows and summer shine
    End but in autumn's pale decline.
    • Canto I
  • The cold north wind which bows to earth
    The lightness of the willow's birth
    Bends not the mountain cedar trees;
    Folding their branches from the breeze,
    They stand as if they could defy
    The utmost rage of storm and sky.
    • Canto I
  • Oh, she had yet the task to learn
    How often woman's heart must turn
    To feed upon its own excess
    Of deep yet passionate tenderness!
    How much of grief the heart must prove
    That yields a sanctuary to love!
    • Canto I
  • The first, the very first; oh! none
    Can feel again as they have done;
    In love, in war, in pride, in all
    The planets of life's coronal,
    However beautiful or bright,—
    What can be like their first sweet light?
    • Canto II
  • Autumn was falling, but the pine
    Seem'd as it mock'd all change; no sign
    Of season on its leaf was seen,
    The same dark gloom of changeless green.
    But like the gorgeous Persian bands
    'Mid the stern race of northern lands,
    The chesnut boughs were bright with all
    That gilds and mocks the autumn's fall.
    • Canto II
  • Oh, love is timid in its birth!
    Watching her lightest look or stir,
    As he but look'd and breathed with her.
    Gay words were passing, but he leant
    In silence; yet, one quick glance sent,—
    His secret is no more his own,
    When has woman her power not known?
    • Canto II
  • Awakening hope has named the name
    Of love, or blown its spark to flame.
    Restlessness, but as the winds range
    From leaf to leaf, from flower to flower;
    Changefulness, but as rainbows change,
    From colour'd sky to sunlit hour.
    Ay, well indeed may minstrel sing,—
    What have the heart and year like spring?
    • Canto II
  • Where is the heart that has not bow'd
    A slave, eternal Love, to thee:
    Look on the cold, the gay, the proud,
    And is there one among them free?
    • Canto II
  • Pure as the snow the summer sun
    Never at noon hath look'd upon, —
    Deep, as is the diamond wave,
    Hidden in the desart cave, —
    Changeless, as the greenest leaves
    Of the wreath the cypress weaves, —
    Hopeless, often, when most fond,
    Without hope or fear beyond
    Its own pale fidelity, —
    And this woman's love can be!
    • Canto II
  • The scar of fire, the dint of steel,
    Are easier than Love's wounds to heal.
    • Canto II
  • I LOVED her! ay, I would have given
    A death-bed certainty of heaven
    If I had thought it could confer
    The least of happiness on her!
    • Canto III
  • I kiss'd her lips: oh, God, the chill!
    My heart is frozen with it still:—
    It was as suddenly on me
    Open'd my depths of misery.
    I flung me on the ground, and raved,
    And of the wind that past me craved
    One breath of poison, till my blood
    From lip and brow gush'd in one flood.
    I watch'd the warm stream of my veins
    Mix with the death wounds clotted stains;
    Oh! how I pray'd that I might pour
    My heart's tide, and her life restore!
    • Canto III
  • I was borne on an eagle's wing,
    Till with the noon-sun perishing;
    Then I stood in a world alone,
    From which all other life was gone,
    Whence warmth, and breath, and light were fled,
    A world o'er which a curse was said:
    The trees stood leafless all, and bare,
    The sky spread, but no sun was there:
    Night came, no stars were on her way,
    Morn came without a look of day,—
    As night and day shared one pale shroud,
    Without a colour or a cloud.
    And there were rivers, but they stood
    Without a murmur on the flood,
    Waveless and dark, their task was o'er,—
    The sea lay silent on the shore,
    Without a sign upon its breast
    Save of interminable rest:
    And there were palaces and halls,
    But silence reign'd amid their walls,
    Though crowds yet fill'd them; for no sound
    Rose from the thousands gather'd round;
    All wore the same white, bloodless hue,
    All the same eyes of glassy blue,
    Meaningless, cold, corpse-like as those
    No gentle hand was near to close.
    And all seem'd, as they look'd on me,
    In wonder that I yet could be
    A moving shape of warmth and breath
    Alone amid a world of death.
    • Canto III
  • There is an indolence in grief
    Which will not even seek relief.
    What is the toil, or care, or pain,
    The human heart cannot sustain?
    Enough if struggling can create
    A change or colour in our fate;
    But where's the spirit that can cope
    With listless suffering, when hope,
    The last of misery's allies,
    Sickens of its sweet self, and dies.
    • Canto III
  • Oh! what is memory but a gift
    Within a ruin'd temple left,
    Recalling what its beauties were,
    And then presenting what they are.
    • Canto III
  • 'Tis strange with how much power and pride
    The softness is of love allied;
    How much of power to force the breast
    To be in outward show at rest,—
    How much of pride that never eye
    May look upon its agony!
    Ah! little will the lip reveal
    Of all the burning heart can feel.
    • Canto IV
  • Oh! why should woman ever love,
    Trusting to one false star above;
    And fling her little chance away
    Of sunshine for its treacherous ray.
    • Canto IV
  • 'Tis strange how the heart can create
    Or colour from itself its fate;
    We make ourselves our own distress,
    We are ourselves our happiness.
    • Canto IV
  • "There is a steep and lofty wall,
    Where my warders trembling stand,
    He who at speed shall ride round its height,
    For him shall be my hand."
    • Canto IV
  • —music's power
    Is little felt in sunlit hour;
    But hear its voice when hopes depart,
    Like swallows, flying from the heart
    On which the summer's late decline
    Has set a sadness and a sign;. . . . . .
    How deeply will the spirit feel
    The lute, the song's sweet-voiced appeal;
    And how the heart drink in their sighs
    As echoes they from Paradise.
    • Canto IV
  • There is a flower, a snow-white flower,
    Fragile as if a morning shower
    Would end its being, and the earth
    Forget to what it gave a birth;
    And it looks innocent and pale,
    Slight as the least force could avail
    To pluck it from its bed, and yet
    Its root in depth and strength is set.
    The July sun, the autumn rain,
    Beat on its slender stalk in vain;—
    Around it spreads, despite of care,
    Till the whole garden is its share;
    And other plants must fade and fall
    Beneath its deep and deadly thrall.
    This is love's emblem; it is nurst
    In all unconciousness at first,
    Too slight, too fair, to wake distrust;
    No sign how that an after hour
    Will rue and weep its fatal power.
    • Canto IV
  • Never, dear father, love can be,
    Like the dear love I had for thee!
    • Canto IV
  • Alas, tears are the poet's heritage!
    • Juliet after the Masquerade. By Thompson
  • It was no fancy, he had named the name
    Of love, and at that thought her cheek grew flame:
    • Juliet after the Masquerade. By Thompson
  • ... oh! love will last
    When all that made it happiness is past,—
    When all its hopes are as the glittering toys
    Time present offers, time to come destroys,—
    • Juliet after the Masquerade. By Thompson
  • The dying chief sprang to his knee,
    And the staunch'd wounds well'd fearfully;
    But his gash'd arm, what is it now?
    Livid his lip, and black his brow,
    While over him the slayer stood,
    As if he almost scorn'd the blood
    That cost so little to be won,—
    He strikes,—the work of death is done!
    • The Combat. By Etty
  • During slumber's magic reign
    Other times shall live again;
    • The Fairy Queen Sleeping. By Stothart
  • Beautiful language! Love's peculiar, own,
    But only to the spring and summer known.
    • The Oriental Nosegay. By Pickersgill
  • AY, screen thy favourite dove, fair child,
    Ay, screen it if you may,—
    Yet I misdoubt thy trembling hand
    Will scare the hawk away.
    • A Child Screening a Dove from a Hawk. By Stewartson
  • It matters not its history; love has wings
    Like lightning , swift and fatal, and it springs
    Like a wild flower where it is least expected,
    Existing whether cherish'd or rejected;
    • A Girl at her Devotions. By Newton
  • He fell as other thousands do,
    Trampled down where they fall,
    While on a single name is heap'd
    The glory gain'd by all.
    Yet even he whose common grave
    Lies in the open fields,
    Died not without a thought of all
    The joy that glory yields.
    • The Record

The Golden Violet (1827)

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  • TO-MORROW, to-morrow, thou loveliest May,
    To-morrow will rise up thy first-born day;
    Bride of the summer, child of the spring,
    To-morrow the year will its favourite bring:
    • The Golden Violet - title poem - introduction
  • Oh, what am I, and what are they ?
    Masquers but striving to deceive
    Themselves and others ; and believe
    It is enough, if none shall know
    The covered mass of care below.
    • The Golden Violet - title poem - introduction
  • But not like this is Nature's face,
    Though even she must bear the trace
    Of the great curse that clings to all ;
    Her leaves, her flowers, must spring to fall :
    • The Golden Violet - title poem - introduction
  • 'Tis May again, another May,
    Looking as if it meant to stay ;
    So many are its thousand flowers,
    So glorious are its sunny hours,
    So green its earth, so blue its sky,
    As made for Hope's eternity.
    • The Golden Violet - title poem - The First Day
  • Let worldly coldness and care depart,
    And yield to the spell of the minstrel's art.
    • The Golden Violet - title poem - The First Day
  • Where on earth is the truth that may vie
    With woman's lone and long constancy?
    • The Golden Violet - The Broken Spell
  • On the horizon is a star,
    Its earliest, loveliest one by far ;
    A blush is yet upon the sky,
    As if too beautiful to die,—
    A last gleam of the setting sun,
    Like hope when love has just begun ;
    • The Golden Violet - The Broken Spell
  • The bright cloud shone on the river's face,
    But the death-black waters had not a trace
    Of the crimson blaze that over them play'd :
    It seem'd as if a curse were laid
    On the grass, on the river, the tree, and the flower,
    And shut them out from the sunbeam's power ;
    • The Golden Violet - The Broken Spell
  • Light like the wan blue flames that wave
    Their death-torch o'er the murderer's grave ;
    And flickering shapes beset the way,
    Watching in gloom to seize their prey,
    Most terrible, for that the eye
    Wander'd in dim uncertainty ;
    • The Golden Violet - The Broken Spell
  • Then rose those deadlier sounds that tell
    When foes meet hand to hand,—
    The shout, the yell, the iron clang
    Of meeting spear and brand.
    • The Golden Violet - The Falcon
  • It was a summer evening; and the sea
    Seem'd to rejoice in its tranquillity ;
    Rolling its gentle waters to the west,
    Till the rich crimson blush'd upon their breast,
    Uniting lovingly the wave and sky,
    Like Hope content in its delight to die.
    • The Golden Violet - The Child of the Sea
  • For love is like the breathing wind,
    That everywhere may entrance find.
    • The Golden Violet - The Child of the Sea
  • It is a charmed ring—this emerald stone
    Will be a sign, when thou art from me gone.
    Mark if it changes; if a spot be seen
    On the now spotless ground of lighted green,
    Danger is round me; haste thou then to me,
    Thou know'st how fearless is my trust in thee.
    • The Golden Violet - The Child of the Sea
  • For he had curious colours, that could give
    The human face so like, it seem'd to live.
    • The Golden Violet - The Child of the Sea
  • And Love is like the lightning in its might,
    Winging where least bethought its fiery flight,
    Melting the blade, despite the scabbard's guard.
    • The Golden Violet - The Child of the Sea
  • 'T was night, but night which the imperial moon,
    Regal in her full beauty, turn'd to noon,
    But still the noon of midnight; though the ray
    Was clear and bright, it was not that of day;
    • The Golden Violet - The Child of the Sea
  • Out on the heartless creed which nulls the claim
    Upon the heart of kindred, birth, and name.
    • The Golden Violet - The Child of the Sea
  • True love is timid, as it knew its worth,
    And that such happiness is scarce for earth.
    • The Golden Violet - The Child of the Sea
  • There stood she, even as a statue stands,
    With head droop'd downward, and with clasped hands;
    Such small white hands that match'd her ivory feet,
    How may they bear that scorching fire to meet?
    • The Golden Violet - The Child of the Sea
  • Despair weeps not. Her lip moved as in prayer
    Unconsciously ; as if prayers had been there,
    And they moved now from custom.
    • The Golden Violet - The Child of the Sea
  • Oh! frail are the many links that are
    In the chain of affection's tender care,
    • The Golden Violet - The Ring
  • Alas! when angry words begin
    Their entrance on the lip to win;
    When sullen eye and flushing cheek
    Say more than bitterest tone could speak;
    And look and word, than fire or steel,
    Give wounds more deep,—time cannot heal;
    And anger digs, with tauntings vain,
    A gulf it may not pass again.
    • The Golden Violet - The Ring
  • The earth was parched, the trees were sear'd,
    And blasted every branch appear'd;
    At one end yawned a gloomy cave,
    Black, as its mouth were that of the grave;
    And dark, as if the waters of death
    Were in its depths, rose a well beneath.
    • The Golden Violet - The Ring
  • Dreary it is the path to trace,
    Step by step of sin's wild race.
    • The Golden Violet - The Ring
  • What need hath she
    Of shrine to her divinity?
    Each fair face is her visible shrine;
    She hath been, she will be divine.
    • The Golden Violet - The Queen of Cyprus
  • Beautiful weakness! oh, if weak,
    That woman's heart should tinge her cheek!
    'Tis sad to change it for the strength
    That heart and cheek must know at length.
    • The Golden Violet - The Queen of Cyprus
  • I'm weary, I'm weary. Oh! pleasure is pain
    When its spell has been broken again and again.
    I am weary of smiles that are bought and are sold,
    I am weary of beauty whose fetters are gold,
    I am weary of wealth—what makes it of me
    But that which the basest and lowest might be?
    • The Golden Violet - The Eastern King
  • Ahmed comes back a conqueror, but what hath he found?
    The cry of the orphan is loud on his ear,
    And his eye hath beheld the young bride's bitter tear,
    And the friend of his youth is left dead on the plain,
    And the flower of his nobles return not again.
    There are crowds that are filling the air with his name;
    Do ye marvel the monarch is loathing his fame?
    • The Golden Violet - The Eastern King
  • I numbered years of pain and distress,
    And but fourteen days of happiness.
    Mortal, nor pleasure, nor wealth, nor power,
    Are more than the toys of a passing hour;
    • The Golden Violet - The Eastern King
  • My heart is like the failing hearth
    Now by my side,
    One by one its bursts of flame
    Have burnt and died.
    • The Golden Violet - Clemenza’s Song
  • Where do purple bubbles swim,
    But upon the goblet's brim ?
    Drink not deep, howe'er it glow
    Sparkles never lie below.
    • The Golden Violet - Lady Isabelle’s First Song
  • For my spirit hath left her earthly home
    And found a nobler dwelling,
    Where the music of light is that of life,
    And the starry harps are swelling.
    • The Golden Violet - Amenaïde
  • I cannot choose but marvel at the way
    In which our lives pass on, from day to day
    Learning strange lessons in the human heart,
    And yet like shadows letting them depart.
    • The Golden Violet - The Rose
  • We do too little feel each others' pain;
    We do relax too much the social chain
    That binds us to each other; slight the care
    There is for grief in which we have no share.
    • The Golden Violet - The Rose
  • For misery, like a masquer, mocks at all
    In which it has no part, or one of gall,
    • The Golden Violet - The Rose
  • Such as the lute, touch'd by no hand
    Save by an angel's, wakes and weeps,
    Such is the sound that now to land
    From the charmed water sweeps.
    • The Golden Violet - The Haunted Lake
  • A louder sweep the music gave :
    The chieftain of the charmed wave,
    Graceful upon his steed of snow,
    Rises from his blue halls below ;
    And rode he like a victor-knight
    Thrice glorious in his arms of light.
    • The Golden Violet - The Haunted Lake
  • Blush'd the first blush of coming day,
    Faded the fairy band away.
    They pass'd and only left behind
    A lingering fragrance on the wind,
    And on the lake, their haunted home,
    One long white wreath of silver foam.
    • The Golden Violet - The Haunted Lake
  • They see the mortal maiden ride
    In honour by the chieftan's side,
    So beautiful, so free from sin,
    Worthy was she such boon to win :
    The spirit race that floated round
    Were not more pure, more stainless found
    • The Golden Violet - The Haunted Lake
  • There grew her father's cypress tree,
    No other monument had he.
    He bade that never funeral stone
    Should tell of glory overthrown,—
    What could it say, but foreign sky
    Had seen the exile pine and die?
    • The Golden Violet - The Wreath
  • Maiden, fling from thy braided hair
    The red rosebud that is wreathed there ;
    For he who planted the parent tree
    Is now what soon that blossom will be.
    • The Golden Violet - The Wreath
  • One moment he is at her knee,
    “So, Leila, wouldst thou weep for me ?”
    Started she, as at lightning gleam,—
    “O, Mirza, this I did not dream!
    Moslem and Moor, may Spanish maid
    Hearken such words as thou hast said?”
    • The Golden Violet - The Wreath
  • When will my soul forget the look
    With which one single stem she took
    From out the wreath ?—a tulip flower;
    But, touch'd as by some withering power,
    The painted leaves were drooping round
    The rich but burning heart they bound.
    • The Golden Violet - The Wreath
  • She fell as falls the rose in spring,
    The fairest are ever most perishing,
    Yet lingers that tale of sorrow and love,
    Of the Christian maid and her Moslem love ;
    A tale to be told in the twilight hour,
    For the beauty's tears in her lonely bower.
    • The Golden Violet - The Wreath
  • O ! the heart has all too many tears ;
    But none are like those that wait
    On the blighted love, the loneliness
    Of the young orphan's fate.
    • The Golden Violet - Sir Walter Manny at his Father’s Tomb
  • So much to win, so much to lose,
    No marvel that I fear to choose.
    • The Golden Violet - title poem - ending
  • There is an antique gem, on which her brow
    Retains its graven beauty even now.
    • Erinna
  • Childhood whose very happiness is love.
    • Erinna
  • Had my eye never on the beauty dwelt
    Of human face, and my ear never drank
    The music of a human voice; I feel
    My spirit would have pour'd itself in song,
    Have learn'd a language from the rustling leaves,
    The singing of the birds, and of the tide.
    • Erinna
  • How much
    I loved the painter's glorious art, which forms
    A world like, but more beautiful than this;
    Just catching nature in her happiest mood!
    • Erinna
  • But music is a mystery, and viewless
    Even when present, and is less man's act,
    And less within his order; for the hand
    That can call forth the tones, yet cannot tell
    Whither they go, or if they live or die,
    When floated once beyond his feeble ear;
    • Erinna
  • Music moves us, and we know not why;
    We feel the tears, but cannot trace their source.
    Is it the language of some other state,
    Born of its memory ? For what can wake
    The soul's strong instinct of another world,
    Like music?
    • Erinna
  • Pride misers with enjoyment, when we have
    Delight in things that are but of the mind:
    But half humility when we partake
    Pleasures that are half wants, the spirit pines
    And struggles in its fetters, and disdains
    The low base clay to which it is allied.
    • Erinna
  • O dream of fame, what hast thou been to me
    But the destroyer of life's calm content!
    • Erinna
  • Which is the best,—
    Beauty and glory, in a southern clime,
    Mingled with thunder, tempest ; or the calm
    Of skies that scarcely change, which, at the least,
    If much of shine they have not, have no storms?
    • Erinna
  • The sunshine of the morning
    Is abroad upon the hills,
    With the singing of the green-wood leaves,
    And of a thousand rills.
    • One Day
  • Oh, glory of the morning!
    Oh, ye gifted, young, and brave!
    What end have ye, but midnight;
    What find ye but the grave ?
    • One Day
  • Teach it me, if you can,—forgetfulness!
    I surely shall forget, if you can bid me;
    • Love’s Last Lesson
  • Down she bent
    Her head upon an arm so white that tears
    Seem'd but the natural melting of its snow,
    Touch'd by the flush'd cheek's crimson.
    • Love’s Last Lesson
  • And had he not long read
    Her heart's hush'd secret in the soft dark eye
    Lighted at his approach, and on the cheek
    Colouring all crimson at his lightest look?
    • Love’s Last Lesson
  • And here at length is somewhat of revenge:
    For man's most golden dreams of pride and power
    Are vain as any woman-dreams of love;
    Both end in weary brow and wither'd heart,
    And the grave closes over those whose hopes
    Have lain there long before.
    • Love’s Last Lesson

The Venetian Bracelet (1829)

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  • Deceit is this world's passport: who would dare,
    However pure the breast, to lay it bare?
    • Title poem
  • Why should I love? flinging down pearl and gem
    To those who scorn, at least care not for them:
    Why should I hate? as blades in scabbards melt,
    I have no power to make my hatred felt;
    • Title poem
  • How much we give to other hearts our tone,
    And judge of others' feelings by our own!
    • Title poem, section IV.
  • Her rival—hers—language has not a word
    By woman's ear so utterly abhorr'd.
    No marvel, for it robs her only part
    Of sweet dominion—empire o'er the heart.
    • Title poem, section IV.
  • She sleeps!—so sleeps the wretch beside the stake:
    She sleeps!—how dreadful from such sleep to wake!
    • Title poem, section V.
  • Who has not loathed that worst, that waking hour,
    When grief and consciousness assert their power;
    When misery has morn's freshness, yet we fain
    Would hold it as a dream, and sleep again;
    • Title poem, section VI.
  • There are remembrances that will not vanish,—
    Thoughts of the past we would but cannot banish:
    As if to show how impotent mere will,
    We loathe the pang, and yet must suffer still:
    For who is there can say they will forget?
    —It is a power no science teaches yet.
    • Title poem, section VII.
  • Alas! alas! how plague-spot like will sin
    Spread over the wrung heart it enters in!
    • Title poem, section VIII.
  • The sudden start, the rapid step once more,—
    As if it would annihilate the time:—
    But who may paint the solitude of crime?
    • Title poem, section IX.
  • A story from the stars; or rather one
    Of starry fable from the olden time,
    When young Imagination was as fresh
    As the fair world it peopled with itself.
    • The Lost Pleiad
  • And all o'er heaven is that clear blue
    The stars so love to wander through.
    They're rising from the silent deep,
    Like bright eyes opening after sleep.
    • The Lost Pleiad
  • The bard, the warrior, and the sage,
    What win they but one lying page,
    Where deeds and words, at hazard thrown,
    May be or may not be their own?
    • The Lost Pleiad
  • But o'er CYRENE'S cheek the rose,
    Like moon-touch'd water, ebbs and flows;
    And eyes that droop like Summer flowers
    Told they could change with shine and showers.
    • The Lost Pleiad
  • Alas! vows are his after sign!—
    We prop the tree in its decline—
    The ghosts that haunt a parting hour,
    With all of grief, and nought of power;
    A chain half sunder'd in the making,—
    The plighted vow's already breaking.
    • The Lost Pleiad
  • Sketches indeed, from that most passionate page,
    A woman's heart, of feelings, thoughts, that make
    The atmosphere in which her spirit moves;
    • A History of the Lyre
  • When years have past
    Over the fallen arch, the ruin'd hall,
    It seems but course of time, the one great doom,
    Whose influence is alike upon us all;
    • A History of the Lyre
  • —I never saw more perfect loveliness.
    It ask'd, it had no aid from dress: her robe
    Was white, and simply gather'd in such folds
    As suit a statue: neck and arms were bare;
    The black hair was unbound, and like a veil
    Hung even to her feet; she held a lute,
    And, as she paced the ancient gallery, waked
    A few wild chords, and murmur'd low sweet words,
    But scarcely audible, as if she thought
    Rather than spoke:—the night, the solitude,
    Fill'd the young Pythoness with poetry.
    • A History of the Lyre
  • 'Tis this which makes
    The best assurance of our promised heaven:
    This triumph intellect has over death—
    Our words yet live on others' lips; our thoughts
    Actuate others. Can that man be dead
    Whose spiritual influence is upon his kind?
    • A History of the Lyre
  • I am a woman:—tell me not of fame.
    • A History of the Lyre
  • I did not choose my gift:—too soon my heart,
    Watch-like, had pointed to a later hour
    Than time had reach'd: and as my years pass'd on,
    Shadows and floating visions grew to thoughts,
    And thoughts found words, the passionate words of song,
    And all to me was poetry.
    • A History of the Lyre
  • I speak of my own feelings—I can judge
    Of others but by outward show, and that
    Is falser than the actor's studied part.
    We dress our words and looks in borrow'd robes:
    The mind is as the face—for who goes forth
    In public walks without a veil at least?
    • A History of the Lyre
  • I am vain—praise is opium, and the lip
    Cannot resist the fascinating draught,
    Though knowing its excitement is a fraud—
    Delirious—a mockery of fame.
    • A History of the Lyre
  • I may be kind,
    And meet with kindness, yet be lonely still;
    For gratitude is not companionship.—
    • A History of the Lyre
  • How noble and ennobling!—but within
    How mean, how poor, how pitiful, how mix'd
    With base alloy; how Disappointment tracks
    The steps of Hope; how Envy dogs success;
    How every victor's crown is lined with thorns,
    And worn mid scoffs!
    • A History of the Lyre
  • -- social life is fill'd
    With doubts and vain aspirings; solitude,
    When the imagination is dethroned,
    Is turned to weariness.
    • A History of the Lyre
  • Methinks we must have known some former state
    More glorious than our present, and the heart
    Is haunted with dim memories, shadows left
    By past magnificence; and hence we pine
    With vain aspirings, hopes that fill the eyes
    With bitter tears for their own vanity.
    • A History of the Lyre
  • Remembrance makes the poet; 'tis the past
    Lingering within him, with a keener sense
    Than is upon the thoughts of common men
    Of what has been, that fills the actual world
    With unreal likenesses of lovely shapes,
    That were and are not; and the fairer they,
    The more their contrast with existing things,
    The more his power, the greater is his grief.
    • A History of the Lyre
  • I held that Love
    Which chooseth from a thousand only one,
    To be the object of that tenderness
    Natural to every heart; which can resign
    Its own best happiness for one dear sake;
    Can bear with absence; hath no part in Hope,—
    For Hope is somewhat selfish, Love is not,—
    And doth prefer another to itself.
    • A History of the Lyre
  • Alas! we make
    A ladder of our thoughts, where angels step,
    But sleep ourselves at the foot: our high resolves
    Look down upon our slumbering acts.
    • A History of the Lyre
  • There was a sculptured form; the feet were placed
    Upon a finely-carved rose wreath; the arms
    Were raised to Heaven, as if to clasp the stars
    EULALIA leant beside; 'twas hard to say
    Which was the actual marble: when she spoke,
    You started, scarce it seem'd a human sound;
    But the eyes' lustre told life linger'd still;
    And now the moonlight seem'd to fill their depths.
    • A History of the Lyre
  • Peace to the weary and the beating heart,
    That fed upon itself!
    • A History of the Lyre
  • IT is in this we differ; I would seek
    To blend my very being into thine—
    I'm even jealous of thy memory:
    I wish our childhood had been pass'd together.
    • The Ancestress (Spoken by Bertha to Jaromir)
  • the hollow voice
    Of that old crone, the only living sound;
    Her face, on which mortality has writ
    Its closing, with the wan and bony hand,
    Raised like a spectre's—and yourself the while,
    Cold from the midnight chill, and white with fear,
    Your large blue eyes darker and larger grown
    With terror's chain'd attention, and your breath
    Suppress'd for very earnestness.
    • The Ancestress (Spoken by Jaromir to Bertha)
  • Now
    I have no hope that does not dream for thee;
    I have no joy that is not shared by thee;
    I have no fear that does not dread for thee.
    • The Ancestress (Spoken by Bertha, of Jaromir)
  • I can pass days
    Stretch'd in the shade of those old cedar trees,
    Watching the sunshine like a blessing fall,—
    The breeze like music wandering o'er the boughs,—
    Each tree a natural harp,— each different leaf
    A different note, blent in one vast thanks-giving.
    • The Ancestress (Spoken by Jaromir)
  • A weight is on the air, for ev'ry breeze
    Has, bird-like, folded up its wings for sleep.
    • The Ancestress (Spoken by Bertha)
  • Blue hyacinths!
    Oh, do not show them me; they fill my eyes
    With tears too soft for such a scene as this.
    • The Ancestress (Spoken by Bertha)
  • I am spectator, not partaker, here.
    To me it seems more like a pageant made
    To represent mirth, than the mirth itself.
    • The Ancestress (Spoken by Bertha)
  • The early graced of Grecian song,
    The fragrant myrtle tree;
    For it doth speak of happy love,
    The delicate, the true.
    • Poetical Portrait I
  • Thou blessed season of our spring,
    When hopes are angels on the wing;
    Bound upwards to their heavenly shore,
    Alas! to visit earth no more.
    • Poetical Portrait II
  • Alas! the praise given to the ear
    Ne'er was nor e'er can be sincere—
    And does but waste away the mind
    On which it preys:—in vain
    Would they in whom its poison lurks
    A worthier state attain.
    • Poetical Portrait III
  • Thy voice is sweet, as if it took
    Its music from thy face.
    And word and mien, and step and look,
    Are perfect in their grace.
    • Poetical Portrait V
  • How can they say confiding is relief?
    Light are the woes that to the eyelids spring,
    Subdued and soften'd by the tears they bring;
    But there are some too long, too well conceal'd,
    Too deeply felt,—that are but once reveal'd:
    Like the withdrawing of the mortal dart,
    And then the life-blood follows from the heart;
    Sorrow, before unspoken by a sigh,
    But which, once spoken, only hath to die.—
    • The Neglected One
  • How deep, how merciless, the love represt,
    That robs the silent midnight of its rest;
    That sees in gather'd crowds but one alone;
    That hears in mingled footsteps only one;
    That turns the poet's page, to only find
    Some mournful image for itself design'd;
    That seeks in music, but the plaining tone
    Which secret sorrow whispers is its own!
    • The Neglected One
  • The heart hath its mystery, and who may reveal it,
    Or who ever read in the depths of their own? —
    How much, we never may speak of, yet feel it,
    But, even in feeling it, know it unknown!
    • A Night in May
  • Spirit, that ruleth man's life to its ending,
    Chance, Fortune, Fate, answer my summoning now;
    The storm o'er the face of the night is descending,—
    Fair moon, the dark clouds hide thy silvery brow.
    Let these bring thy answer, and tell me if sadness
    For ever man's penance and portion must be;
    Doth the morning come forth from a birthplace of gladness?
    Is there peace, is there rest, in thine empire or thee?
    • A Night in May
  • Free, thou sayest,—dream'st thou how?
    Loathing wouldst thou shun dismay'd
    Freedom by such ransom paid.
    —Girl, for thee I'll lay aside
    Veil of smiles and mask of pride;
    Shrowds that only ask of Fate
    Not to seem so desolate.
    —I am young,—but Age's snow
    Hides not colder depths below ...
    • Warning:
  • I'm weary, I'm weary,—this cold world of ours;
    I will go dwell afar, with fairies and flowers.
    . . . .
    I'm weary, I'm weary,—I'm off with the wind:
    Can I find a worse fate than the one left behind?
    • Fantasies, inscribed to T. Crofton Croker, Esq.
  • 'Tis well: the rack, the chain, the wheel,
    Far better had'st thou proved;
    Ev'n I could almost pity feel,
    For thou art not beloved.
    • Revenge
  • Oh never another dream can be
    Like that early dream of ours,
    When the fairy Hope lay down to sleep,
    Like a child, among the flowers.
    • Song: Oh never another dream can be
  • The woman was in abject misery—that worst of poverty, which is haunted by shame—the only relic left by better days. She shrunk from all efforts at recovery, refused to administer the medicines, and spoke of the child's death but as a blessing.
    My God! and is the daily page of life
    Darken'd with wretchedness like this?
    • The Dying Child
  • Are we not like that actor of old time,
    Who wore his mask so long his face took
    Its likeness?
    • A Summer Evening’s Tale
  • In this our social state, where petty cares
    And mercenary interests only look
    Upon the present's littleness, and shrink
    From the bold future, and the stately past,—
    • A Summer Evening’s Tale
  • For wishes are effectual but by will,
    And that too much is impotent and void
    In frail humanity; and time steals by
    Sinful and wavering, and unredeem'd.
    • A Summer Evening’s Tale
  • Who shall say
    The love of genius is a common thing,
    Such as the many feel—half selfishness,
    Half vanity?—for genius is divine,
    And, like a god, doth turn its dwelling-place
    Into a temple; and the heart redeem'd
    By its fine influence is immortal shrine
    For love's divinity.
    • A Summer Evening’s Tale
  • Alas!
    We give our destiny from our own hands,
    And trust to those most frail of all frail things,
    The chances of humanity.
    • A Summer Evening’s Tale
  • Well, read my cheek, and watch my eye,—
        Too strictly school'd are they,
    One secret of my soul to show,
        One hidden thought betray.
    • Lines of Life
  • I have such eagerness of hope
    To benefit my kind;
    And feel as if immortal power
    Were given to my mind.
    • Lines of Life
  • But song has touch'd my lips with fire,
    And made my heart a shrine;
    For what, although alloy'd, debased,
    Is in itself divine.
    • Lines of Life
  • Let music make less terrible
    The silence of the dead;
    I care not, so my spirit last
    Long after life has fled.
    • Lines of Life
  • And this is the sum of our mortal state,
    The hopes we number,—
    Feverish waking, danger, death,
    And listless slumber.
    • The Battle Field
  • Another year, another year,—
    Alas! and must it be
    That Time's most dark and weary wheel
    Must turn again for me?
    • New Year's Eve
  • My tears are buried in my heart,
    Like cave-locked fountains sleeping.
    • Song - I pray thee let me weep to-night
  • I would give worlds, could I believe
    One-half that is profess'd me;
    Affection! could I think it Thee,
    When Flattery has caress'd me.
    • Song - I pray thee let me weep to-night

Heath's book of Beauty, 1833 (1832)

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  • For a discussion of some of the contents of this significant cultural volume, see Adriana Craciun, ‘Fatal Women of Romanticism’, Cambridge University Press, 2004, page 204. The section ‘The Enchantress’ here begins by describing that first story as a ‘self-consciously Byronic text’ that ‘develops a Promethean, distinctly Luciferian model of poetic identity and self-creation’.

The Enchantress

  • Water—the mighty, the pure, the beautiful, the unfathomable—where is thy element so glorious as it is in thine own domain, the deep seas ? What an infinity of power is in the far Atlantic, the boundary of two separate worlds, apart like those of memory and of hope ! or in the bright Pacific, whose tides are turned to gold by a southern sun, and in whose bosom sleep a thousand isles, each covered with the verdure, the flowers, and the fruit of Eden ! But, amid all thy hereditary kingdoms, to which hast thou given beauty, as a birthright, lavishly as thou hast to thy favourite Mediterranean ? The silence of a summer night is now sleeping on its bosom, where the bright stars are mirrored, as if in its depths they had another home and another heaven. A spirit, cleaving air midway between the two, might have paused to ask which was sea, and which was sky. The shadows of earth and earthly things, resting omen-like upon the waters, alone shewed which was the home and which the mirror of the celestial host.
  • We step not over the threshold of childhood till led by Love
  • Strange, that ignorance should be our best happiness in this life, and yet be the one we are ever striving to destroy !
  • The weakness of our nature—how soon any strong emotion masters it !
  • I had lost of humanity but its illusions, and they alone are what render it supportable.
  • Truly, night was made for sleep; since to its wakeful hours belongs an oppression unknown to the very dreariest hours of day. The stillness is so deep, the solitude so unbroken, the fever brought on by want of rest so weakens the nerves, that the imagination exercises despotic and unwholesome power, till, if the heart have a fear or a sorrow, up it arises in all the force and terror of gigantic exaggeration.
  • For when do friends not delight in the sorrow of the prosperous?
  • He who seeks pleasure with reference to himself, not others, will ever find that pleasure is only another name for discontent.
  • In sad truth, half our forebodings of our neighbours are but our own wishes, which we are ashamed to utter in any other form.
  • How often will the lip frame some indifferent question, when the heart is full of the most important!

The Talisman

  • How strong is the love of the country in all indwellers of towns !
  • Curious it is that every hour of our day is repeated from myriad chimes; and yet how rarely do we attend to the clock striking! Alas! how emblematic is this of the way in which we neglect the many signs of time! How terrible, when we think of what time may achieve, is the manner in which we waste it! At the end of every man's life, at least three-quarters of the mighty element of which that life was composed will be found void—lost—nay, utterly forgotten! And yet that time, laboured and husbanded, might have built palaces, gathered wealth, and, still greater, made an imperishable name.
  • Poverty is a terrible thing when it bows to the very ground the pride of the strong man—a terrible thing when it leaves old age destitute: till, the strong man may yet redeem his fortunes, and that old age may have had enjoyment while it was capable of enjoying. But a child, with the step slow from weakness, which from its age should be so buoyant; a cheek thin and white from hunger, at a period which especially cares for food (for all children are greedy); a form shrivelled with cold; a growth stopped by work too laborious for such tender years; a spirit broken by toil, want, and harshness; —is not such a child poverty's most miserable spectacle? It is, however, a common one.
  • {of Theatres} There, while weeping for sorrows which are not, laughing at the light jest or the ludicrous misadventure, how little is remembered of the want which makes fear the only bond that binds the living to life !
  • Good and evil ! good and evil ! ye are mingled inextricably in the web of our being ; and who may unthread the darker yarn ?
  • There must be some deep-rooted anti-social principle in every man's nature, so dearly does he love aught that separates him from his kind ; or is it but one of the many shapes taken by that mental kaleidoscope, vanity, the varying and the glittering, the desire of distinction, sinking into that of notice?
  • The peasant boy, who followed the coloured track of the rainbow, hoping to find the blue and charmed flower which springs where the arch touches earth, is wiser far than one who gives youth, genius, and time to literature.
  • What a mistake rage is ! anger should never go beyond a sneer, if it really desires revenge.
  • Distinction is purchased at the expense of sympathy
  • We again repeat, that there is no temper so communicative as an imaginative one.
  • ... who has not experienced, at some time or other, that words had all the relief of tears?
  • Not that we would detract one iota from the benevolence which does exist in humanity ; there is both more gratitude and more cause for gratitude than it is the fashion now-a-days to admit: but this we do say, that the obligation is never from those on whom we have a claim. Kindness is always unexpected; and “overcomes us like a summer cloud," exciting our "special wonder" as well as thankfulness.
  • What a falsehood it is to say that genius and industry are incompatible ! Does one work of genius exist that has not also been a work of labour ?
  • —to enjoy yourself is the easy method to give enjoyment to others; ...
  • A despotic power makes slaves.
  • I rather disdained than coveted the luxuries I saw : alas ! we desire riches more for others than ourselves.
  • —vanity, like all social vices, craves for novelty ;
  • —true love is like religion, it hath its silence and its sanctity.
  • They say gravity is the centre of attraction ; I rather think that noise is. Nothing so soon assembles the inhabitants of a house as a loud and sudden noise : ...
  • ... when was a woman ever witty without being bitter?
  • To use the established phrase, three months of uninterrupted happiness glided away—a phrase, though in frequent use, whose accuracy I greatly doubt ; there being no such thing as uninterrupted happiness any how or any where.

The Knife

  • The discharge of a duty from affection is the best solace for sorrow.
  • The gallantry of an English peasant rarely expands into words.
  • —what an odd thing it is, that the indications of terror are usually ludicrous !
  • There is no denying the fact, that in all sudden emergencies a woman has ten times the presence of mind, or, to use the common expression, her wits more about her than a man.
  • Death never excites such sympathy as it does when it assumes the shape of murder.
  • Human nature is accused of much more selfishness than it really has ; a thousand kindly emotions break in upon and redeem our daily and interested life.
  • There is a deep impression of awe produced by such a vast but silent crowd ; we are at once conscious that the cause is terrible which can induce the unusual stillness. The issue of a trial on which hangs life or death, is indeed an appalling thing. We know that men are about to take away that which they cannot give—that a few words of human breath will deprive of breath one of the number for ever ; and though we acknowledge that in this evil world punishment is the only security against crime, and that blood for blood has been a necessity from the beginning of time ; still, we feel that the necessity is a dreadful one.
  • How incomprehensible is woman's love ! —it is not kindness that wins it, nor return that insures it; we daily see the most devoted attachment lavished on those who seem to us singularly unworthy. The Spectator shewed his usual knowledge of human nature, when, in speaking on this subject, he relates, that in a town besieged by the enemy, on the women being allowed to depart with whatever they held most precious, only one among them carried off her husband,—a man notorious for his tyrannical temper, and who had, moreover, a bad—or, as it turned out, a good—habit of beating his wife every morning. Well, all governments are maintained by fear—fear being our great principle of action ; and fear, we are tempted to believe, heightens and strengthens the love of woman.
  • The fearless make their own way.
  • Born with them—born with them : all alike ! No pleasure equal to the pleasure of tormenting, to a woman.

Theresa

  • If we did but know how we rush into one evil while seeking to avoid another, we should have no resolution to shun any thing.
  • Youth's first acquaintance with sorrow is a terrible thing—before time has taught, what it will surely teach, that grief is our natural portion, at once transitory and eternal. But the first lesson is the severest—we have not then looked among our fellows, and seen that suffering is general ; and we feel as if marked out by fate for misery that has no parallel.
  • But as our explanation will be more brief than one broken in upon by words of wonder, regret, and affection, we will proceed to it ; holding that explanation, like advice, should be of all convenient shortness.

Rebecca

  • How beautiful, how buoyant, and glad is morning! The first sunshine on the leaves: the first wind, laden with the first breath of the flowers-that deep sigh with which they seem to waken from sleep; the first dew, untouched even by the light foot of the early hare; the first chirping of the rousing birds, as if eager to begin song and flight; all is redolent of the strength given by rest, and the joy of conscious life.
  • Sound peculiarly appeals to memory.
  • It is a humbling thing to human pride to observe that strength of mind does not preserve its possessor from indulging any favourite delusion; but that this very strength gives its own force to the belief.
  • It is the mistake of a coxcomb, whose experience of affection is all to come—if it ever comes—to say that women are won by mere good looks. Though it does not owe its birth to them. Gratitude and Vanity are the nurses that rock the cradle of Love.
  • What a visionary thing is the independence of youth ! how full of projects, which take the shape of certainties ! How much of rugged and stern experience it requires to convince the young and the eager, that the efforts of an individual unaided by connexion or circumstance, are the true reading of the allegory of the Danaides : —industry and skill, alas, how often are they but water drawn with labour into a bucket full of holes !
  • [From Reginald Clinton]: I do not believe that the heart is turned from the Creator by enjoying his works. Of what avail is the sweet breath of the rose, the morning song of the lark ? The pleasure they impart is not matter of necessity, and yet we delight in both. The soul of the poet is as much His gift as the fragrance of the flower, or the lay of the bird ; and the page where inspired words record heroic deed, touching sorrow, or natural loveliness, is one of those pleasures for which we should be thankful. I, for my part, believe most devoutly in the Almighty mercy, when I see how much that is beautiful and gladdening has been scattered over our pilgrimage here.
  • I do firmly believe that the Londoner is as contented with his city home as the dweller in the fairest valley among the Appennines ; and that habit brings its usual indifference as to place.
  • Out upon the folly which, in estimating human misery, allows aught to bear comparison with the agony of the poor ! I use the word poor relatively; I call not those poor to whom honesty brings self-respect, whose habits and whose means have gone together, and whose industry is its own support. But those are the poor whose exertion supplies not their wants—to whom cold, hunger, and weariness, are common feelings ; who have known better days—to whom the past furnishes contrast, and the future fear.
  • [From Lee, a dramatist]: Ah! the poet hath no true hope, who doth not place it in the many, and in the feeling of the common multitude.
  • [From Lee]: I believe that the mind may make its own immortality : thought is the spiritual part of existence ; and so long as my mind influences others, so long as my thoughts remain behind, so long shall my spirit be conscious and immortal. The body may perish—not so the essence which survives in the living and lasting page.
  • I am persuaded there is no triumph equal to one achieved on the stage—it comes so immediate and so home : you have before you the mass of human beings whose sympathies are at your will; you witness the emotions which you raise, you see the tears which you command : the poet has erected the statue, but it is for you to give it life—the words must find their music on your lips—the generous sentiment, the exalted hope, the touches of deep feeling, ask their expression from you : surely such influence is among the triumphs of the mind, ay and a great and noble triumph.
  • But in this world every thing has its evil ; the dust is on the wheels of the conqueror's chariot—the silken-wrought tapestry covers the mouldering wall;
  • I have ever remarked, that when Fate has any great misfortune in store, it is always preceded by a brief period of calm and sunshine—as if to add bitterness of contrast to all other misery. It is for the happy to tremble—it is over their heads that the thunderbolt is about to burst.
  • ... ; but conscience, like a child, is soon lulled to sleep ; and habit is our idea of eternity.
  • Who does not know the restlessness of an anticipated arrival ?

Experiments; or The Lover from Ennui

  • Cecil Forrester was heir to many misfortunes, being handsome, rich, high-born, and clever.
  • To make our story shorter than the miniature groom's, he learnt that his own property in himself was in danger; and that, if the patriot's definition of liberty be true —"it is like the air we breathe, without it we die"—his life was near its termination. A writ was issued against him; and, thanks to a douceur to his valet, two professional gentlemen, as he left his toilet, would deprive his friends at the Clarendon of his company.
  • On one side, lemons are selling for a shilling a dozen ; on the other, oranges for sixpence. One man blows a horn in your ear, and offers you the Standard ; another exerts his lungs, and shews you the Courier. Pencils are to be had for a penny ; and penknives, with from three to six blades each, for eighteen pence a-dozen. A fellow with a trunk turns its corner on your temples; another deposits a box, with the grocery of a family —sugar, soap, candles, and all—on your toes. A gigantic gentleman nearly knocks you down in his hurry ; and an elderly Jew slips past you so neatly, that you tumble over him before you are aware. Every body is always too late, and therefore every body is in a bustle. Two policemen keep the peace; and half-a-dozen individuals, whose notions on the law of property are at variance with established principles or prejudices, attend for the purpose of breaking it. Add to these some females with shawls and sharp elbows ; and pattens, whose iron rings are for the benefit of foot-passengers. Such is the White Horse Cellar, and the pavement from Dover Street to Albemarle Street.
  • [From Cecil Forrester]: Nothing like love-letters for filling up a rainy morning. A mistress gives a man such an interest in himself! You cannot run your fingers through your hair, without a vision of the locket wherein one of your curls reposes on the fairest neck in the world. An east-wind only conjures up a host of "sweet anxieties ;" and if the worst comes to the worst, you can sit down and write sonnets to your inamorata's eyebrow.
  • English people ... never speak, excepting in cases of fire or murder, unless they are introduced.
  • Now, a fancy ball is bad enough in London, where milliners are many, and where theatres have costumes that may be borrowed or copied ; but in the country, where people are left to their own devices—truly to them may be applied the old poet's account of murderers, "their fancies are all frightful.”
  • We talk of unsophisticated nature—I should like to know where it is to be found.
  • Ill-timed admiration is enough to enrage a saint.
  • What is the reason that we find it so satisfactory to make excuses to ourselves—the only persons in the world to whom they must be altogether needless ?

An Evening at Lucy Ashton's

  • —the unpunished crime is never regretted. We weep over the consequence, not over the fault.

Poetry

  • Unveil'd, unmask'd ! not so, not so !
    Ah ! thine are closer worn
    Than those which, in light mockery,
    One evening thou hast borne.
    The mask and veil which thou dost wear
    Are of thyself a part;
    No mask can ever hide thy face
    As that conceals thy heart.
    • The Mask
  • She leant her head upon her hand : “I know not which to choose—
    Alas ! whichever choice I make, the other I must lose.”
    • The Choice
  • The bride was young and beautiful, the bridegroom stern and old,—
    But the silken rein was hung with pearls, the housings bright with gold.
    • The Choice
  • The wretch who on the scaffold stands
    Has some brief time allow'd
    For parting grasp of kindly hands,
    For farewell to the crowd :
    • Madeline
  • Another soft and scented page,
    Fill'd with more honied words !
    What motives to a pilgrimage
    A shrine like mine affords !
    I know, before I break the seal,
    The words that I shall find:—
    • Belinda, or The Love Letter
  • They say that, hung in ancient halls,
    At midnight from the silent lute
    A melancholy music falls
    From chords which were by daylight mute.
    And so the human heart by night
    Is touched by some inspired tone,
    Harmonious in the deep delight,
    By day it knew not was its own.
    • Meditation
  • O beauty of the midnight skies!
    O mystery of each distant star !
    O dreaming hours, whose magic lies
    In rest and calm, with Day afar!
    Thanks for the higher moods that wake
    Our thoughtful and immortal part !—
    Out on our life, could we not make
    A spiritual temple of the heart ?
    • Meditation
  • And here they met:—where should Love's meeting be —
    Love passionate, and spiritual, and deep—
    Where, but in such a haunted solitude—
    A green and natural temple—fitting shrine
    For vows the stars remember ?
    • The Last of the St. Aubyns
  • Up climb'd the sweet pea,
    The butterfly of flowers:—I love it not,
    Though every hue—and it has many tints—
    Are dyed as if the sunset evening clouds
    Had fallen to the earth in sudden rain,
    And left their colours : purple, delicate pink,
    And snowy white, are on thy wing-like leaves;
    But thou art all too forward in thy bloom ;
    Thy blossoms are the sun's, and cling to all
    That can support them into open day:
    And then they die, leaving no root behind,
    The hope and promise of another spring;
    And no perfume, whose lingering gratitude
    Remains round what upheld its summer's life.
    • The Last of the St. Aubyns
  • Great Heaven ! what vain beliefs
    Have stirred the pulse and led the hopes of man !
    As if that honour could be bought by blood,
    And that the fierce right hand was better worth
    Than the fine mind, and high and generous heart !—
    • The Last of the St. Aubyns

The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

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  • THE present! it is but a drop from the sea
    In the mighty depths of eternity.
    I love it not—it taketh its birth
    Too near to the dull and the common earth.
  • The present—the actual—were they our all—
    Too heavy our burthen, too hopeless our thrall;
    But heaven, that spreadeth o'er all its blue cope,
    Hath given us memory,—hath given us hope!
  • The future! ah, there hath the spirit its home,
    In its distance is written the glorious to come.
  • The present! it sinketh with sorrow and care,
    That but for the future, it never could bear;
    We dwell in its shadow, we see by its light,
    And to-day trusts to-morrow, it then will be bright.
  • The past! ah, we owe it a tenderer debt,
    Heaven's own sweetest mercy is not to forget;
    Its influence softens the present, and flings
    A grace, like the ivy, wherever it clings.
  • Oh! world of sweet phantoms, how precious thou art!
    The past is perpetual youth to the heart.
  • The past is the poet's,—that world is his own;
    Thence hath his music its truth and its tone.
    He calls up the shadows of ages long fled,
    And light, as life lovely, illumines the dead.
  • Youth is too eager, forth it flings
    Itself upon exulting wings,
    Which seek the heaven they ask too near—
    One wild flight ends the bright career;
    With broken wing and darkened eye,
    Earth claims again its own to die.
  • Ah! love and song are but a dream,
    A flower's faint shade on life's dark stream.
    • All from The Vow of the Peacock (Title Poem - Introduction)
  • There is a city, that for slaves
    Has kings, and nations, winds, and waves:
    St. Mark is conscious of her power,
    His winged lion marks her tower.
  • Ah, minstrel song hath many wings!
    From foreign lands its wealth it brings.
  • The lark is with triumphant song
    Singing the rose-touched clouds among:
    'Tis there that lighted song has birth,
    What hath such hymn to do with earth?
  • Many a head that down had lain,
    Impatient with its twelve hours' pain,
    And wishing that the bed it prest,
    Were, as the grave's, a long last rest,
    Has sprung again at morning's call,
    Forgiving, or forgetting all;
    Lighting the weary weight of thought
    With colours from the day-break brought,
    Reading new promise in the sky,
    And hearing Hope, the lark on high.
  • Of all the fowls that sweep the air
    None with the Peacock may compare;
    Not only for its loveliness,
    Though queens in vain might ask such dress,
    But o'er those painted plumes are cast
    So many shadows from the past,—
  • Oh! sweet and sudden fire that springs
    With but a look to light its wings;
    How false to say thou needest time
    The bright ascent of hope to climb;
    A star thou art, that may not be
    Reckoned by dull astronomy!
  • Love's gifts are like the vein of gold
    That intersects earth's darker mould;
    The gold is gained, the coin is wrought;
    But how much trouble has it brought?
  • But who e'er turned from beauty's ray
    For fear of future shade;
    Or who e'er flung a rose away
    Because that rose might fade.
  • How life effaces as it goes
    The keenest pang of earlier woes.
    How careless and how cold we grow,
    Dry as the dust we tread below;
  • She gazed, although she knew not why,
    Where ocean seemed another sky.
    The moon looked down upon the deep,
    Till in that deep it seemed to be;
    Scarce might the eye the image keep
    Of which was sky, and which was sea.
    • All from The Vow of the Peacock - First Canto
  • The twilight, when our earth seems blending
    Its human passion with the skies;
    And rosy clouds, above ascending,
    Wear mortal colours while they rise,
    Till, purified, they disappear
    Amid the high pale atmosphere.
  • He took his lute—his voice was low,
    So lapsing waters softly flow
    Amid the drooping flowers around,
    As if they turned their sighs to sound.
    Ah, magic! of a voice that seems
    To haunt the soul with hopes and dreams;
  • The field is fought—who walketh there?—
    The shadow victory casts—Despair!
  • Night came—the deep and purple time
    Of summer in a southern clime.
  • Take that singing bird away!
    It has too glad a lay
    For an ear so lorn as mine!
    And its wings are all too light,
    And its feathers all too bright,
    To rest in a bosom like mine!
  • Oh, weary day that seemed so long!
    Oh, hours that dragged their weight along!
  • Weep not for the dead with a fruitless recalling,
    Their soul on the wings of the morning hath fled;
    Mourn rather for those whom yet life is enthralling,
    Ah! weep for the living—weep not for the dead.
    • All from The Vow of the Peacock - Second Canto
  • She leant upon her harp, and thousands looked
    On her in love and wonder—thousands knelt
    And worshipp'd in her presence—burning tears,
    And words that died in utterance, and a pause
    Of breathless, agitated eagerness,
    First gave the full heart's homage: then came forth
    A shout that rose to heaven; and the hills,
    The distant valleys, all rang with the name
    Of the Æolian Sappho—every heart
    Found in itself some echo to her song.
    • Sappho from The London Literary Gazette (4th May 1822) Poetic Sketches. 2nd Series - Sketch the First
  • [Alvine] Oh, that sweet ring of graceful figures ! one
    Flings her white arms on high, and gaily strikes
    Her golden cymbals — I can almost deem
    I hear their beatings; one with glancing feet
    Follows her music, while her crimson cheek
    Is flushed with exercise, till the red grape
    'Mid the dark tresses of a sister nymph
    Is scarcely brighter ; there another stands,
    A darker spirit yet, with joyous brow,
    And holding a rich goblet ;
  • [Alvine] 'Tis one of those bright fictions that have made
    The name of Greece only another word
    For love and poetry ; with a green earth—
    Groves of the graceful myrtle — summer skies,
    Whose stars are mirror'd in ten thousand streams—
    Winds that move but in perfume and in music,
    And, more than all, the gift of woman's beauty.
    What marvel that the earth, the sky, the sea,
    Were filled with all those fine imaginings
    That love creates, and that the lyre preserves !
    • Bacchus and Ariadne from The London Literary Gazette (2nd November 1822) Dramatic Scene - II.
  • One of the loveliest daughters of that land,
    Divinest Greece ! that taught the painter's hand
    To give eternity to loveliness ;
    One of those dark-eyed maids, to whom belong
    The glory and the beauty of each Song
    Thy poets breathed, for it was theirs to bless
    With life the pencil and the lyre's dreams,
    Giving reality to visioned gleams
    Of bright divinities.
    • Leander and Hero from The London Literary Gazette (22nd February 1823)
  • A small clear fountain, with green willow trees;
    Girdling it round, there is one single spot
    Where you may sit and rest, its only bank;
  • But these days
    Of visible poetry have long been past!—
    No fear that the young hunter may profane
    The haunt of some immortal;
  • But there are natural temples still for those
    Eternal though dethroned Deities,
    Where from green altars flowers send up their incense:
    This fount is one of them. —
    • The Thessalian Fountain from The London Literary Gazette (24th January 1824) Fragments, 4th Series
  • It was his last, his only field:
    They brought him back upon his shield,
    But victory was won.
    I cannot weep when I recall
    Thy land has cause to bless thy fall.
    • An Old Man Over the Body of his Son from The London Literary Gazette (1st March 1823) Medallion Wafers
  • They built a temple for the God,
    'Twas in a myrtle grove,
    Where the bee and the butterfly
    Vied for each blossom's love.
  • I heard them hymn his name--his power,--
    I heard them, and I smiled;
    How could they say the earth was ruled
    By but a sleeping child?
    • L’Amore Dominatore from Literary Souvenir, 1826
  • I deeply swore
    No lip should sigh where mine before
    Had sealed its vow, no heart should rest
    Upon the bosom mine had prest.
    Life had no ill I would not brave
    To claim him, even in the grave!
  • And this is woman's fate:
    All her affections are called into life
    By winning flatteries, and then thrown back
    Upon themselves to perish; and her heart,
    Her trusting heart, filled with weak tenderness,
    Is left to bleed or break!
    • The Castilian Nuptuals from The London Literary Gazette (28th September 1822) Poetical Sketches. 3rd series - Sketch the Fourth
  • To love, to be beloved again, and know
    A gulf between us:—aye, 'tis misery!
    This agony of passion, this wild faith,
    Whose constancy is fruitless, yet is kept
    Inviolate:—to feel that all life's hope,
    And light, and treasure, clings to one from whom
    Our wayward doom divides us. Better far
    To weep o'er treachery or broken vows,—
    For time may teach their worthlessness:—or pine
    With unrequited love;—there is a pride
    In the fond sacrifice—the cheek may lose
    Its summer crimson; but at least the rose
    Has withered secretly—at least, the heart
    That has been victim to its tenderness,
    Has sighed unechoed by some one as true,
    As wretched as itself.
    • The Lover’s Rock from The London Literary Gazette (5th October 1822) Poetical Sketches. 3rd series - Sketch the Fifth
  • I know not which is the most fatal gift,
    Genius or Love, for both alike are ruled
    By stars of bright aspect and evil influence.
  • He painted till the lamps grew dim, his hand
    Scarce conscious what it wrought; at length his lids
    Closed in a heavy slumber, and he dream'd
    That a fair creature came and kissed his brow,
    And bade him follow her: he knew the look,
    And rose. Awakening, he found himself
    Kneeling before the portrait:—'twas so fair
    He deemed it lived, and press'd his burning lips
    To the sweet mouth; his soul pass'd in that kiss,—
    Young Guido died beside his masterpiece!
    • The Painter. from The London Literary Gazette: 15th November 1823 Poetic Sketches. Fourth Series. Sketch I.
  • . . . the clock
    Was placed where full the sun-beams fell;—what deep,
    Simple morality spoke in those hands,
    Going their way in silence, till a sound,
    Solemn and sweet, made their appeal to Time,
    And the hour spoke its only warning!
  • Even in childhood's innocence of pleasure
    Lives that destroying spirit which in time
    Will waste, then want, the best of happiness.
  • Oh, nothing has the memory of love!
  • Love, passionate young Love, how sweet it is
    To have the bosom made a Paradise
    By thee—life lighted by thy rainbow smile!
    • A Village Tale. from The London Literary Gazette: 6th December 1823 Poetic Sketches. Fourth Series. Sketch IV.
  • My bark is on the ocean riding,
    Like a spirit o'er it gliding;
    Maiden, wilt thou come—and be
    Queen of my fair ship and me?
  • Alas! she looked but in that eye
    Where now was writ her destiny.
    The heart love leaves looks back ever;
    The heart where he is dwelling, never.
  • Oh, who—reposed on some fond breast,
    Love's own delicious place of rest—
    Reading faith in the watching eyes,
    Feeling the heart beat with its sighs,
    Could know regrets, or doubts, or cares,
    That we had bound our fate with theirs!
    • The Sisters from The London Literary Gazette: 13th March 1824 Metrical Tales - Tale III.
  • Oh, there are evil moments in our life,
    When but a thought, a word, a look, has power
    To dash the cup of happiness aside,
    And stamp us wretched!
  • It is so sad —
    So very lonely — to be the sole one
    In whom there is a sign of change!
    • The Knight’s Tale from The London Literary Gazette: 31st July 1824 Poetic Sketches - 5th Series - Sketch the Third
  • THERE rests a shade above yon town,
    A dark funereal shroud:
    'Tis not the tempest hurrying down,
    'Tis not a summer cloud.
    The smoke that rises on the air
    Is as a type and sign;
    A shadow flung by the despair
    Within those streets of thine.
  • Look on yon child, it droops the head,
    Its knees are bow'd with pain;
    It mutters from its wretched bed,
    "Oh, let me sleep again!"
    Alas! 'tis time, the mother's eyes
    Turn mournfully away;
    Alas! 'tis time, the child must rise,
    And yet it is not day.
    • The Factory
  • Of all the months that fill the year
    Give April's month to me,
    For earth and sky are then so filled
    With sweet variety !
  • The apple blossoms' shower of pearl,
    The pear tree's rosier hue,
    As beautiful as woman's blush,
    As evanescent too.
  • It is like love ; oh love should be
    An ever-changing thing, —
    The love that I could worship must
    Be ever on the wing.
    • April from The London Literary Gazette (5th April 1823)
  • [Before]
    Just two or three sweet chords, that seemed
    An echo of thy tone,—
    The cushat's song was on the wind
    And mingled with thine own.
  • [After]
    Burnt to the dust, an ashy heap
    Was every cottage round;—
    I listened, but I could not hear
    One single human sound:
    • Glencoe from The London Literary Gazette (12th July 1823)
  • Is there some nameless boding sent,
    Like a noiseless voice from the tomb?—
    A spirit note from the other world,
    To warn of death and doom?
    • The Wreck from The London Literary Gazette (10th September 1825) - under the pen name Iole
  • THE Moon is sailing o'er the sky,
    But lonely all, as if she pined
    For somewhat of companionship,
    And felt it was in vain she shined:
    Earth is her mirror, and the stars
    Are as the court around her throne;
    She is a beauty and a queen;
    But what is this? she is alone.
    • The Moon from The London Literary Gazette (25th March 1826)
  • Each look'd upon his comrade's face,
    Pale as funereal stone ;
    Yet none could touch the other's hand,
    For none could feel his own.
    Like statues fixed, that gallant band
    Stood on the dread deck to die ;
    The sleet was their shroud, the wind their dirge,
    And their churchyard the sea and sky.
  • He said it was fearful to see them stand,
    Nor the living nor yet the dead,
    And the light glared strange in the glassy eyes
    Whose human look was fled.
    For frost had done one half life's part,
    And kept them from decay ;
    Those they loved had mouldered, but these
    Look'd the dead of yesterday.
    • The Frozen Ship, from The London Literary Gazette, (16th September 1826) - Metrical Fragment No. V. - The Frozen Ship, under the pen name 'Iole'
  • Like prisoners escaped during night from their prison,
    The waters fling gaily their spray to the sun;
    Who can tell me from whence that glad river has risen?
    Who can say whence it springs in its beauty?—not one.
    • The Minstrel’s Monitor from Literary Souvenir, 1827
  • In sooth, this earth is a lovely place;
    Pass not in darkness over her face;
    Yet call back thy words of doom—
    They are too gay and too fair for the tomb.
    . . . .
    And have seen--alas! 'tis but outward show—
    The sunshine of yon green earth below:
    Glad of rest must the wretched and way-worn be—
    Angel of Death, they are ready for thee!
    • The Spirit and the Angel of Death from Friendship's Offering, 1827
  • A light is gone from yonder sky,
    A star has left its sphere;
    The beautiful--and do they die
    In yon bright world as here?
    Will that star leave a lonely place,
    A darkness on the night?—
    No; few will miss its lovely face,
    And none think heaven less bright!
    • The Lost Star from The Literary Souvenir, 1828
  • Beautiful wreck! for still thy face,
    Though changed, is very fair;
    Like beauty's moonlight, left to shew
    Her morning sun was there.
    • The Change from The London Literary Gazette (16th February 1828)
  • THE quiet of the evening hour
    Was laid on every summer leaf;
    That purple shade was on each flower,
    At once so beautiful, so brief,
    Only the aspen knew not rest,
    But still, with an unquiet song,
    Kept murmuring to the gentle west,
    And cast a changeful shade along.
    • The Aspen Tree from The London Literary Gazette (21st August 1830)
  • Though many a flower may win my praise,
    The violet has my love;
    I did not pass my childish days
    In garden or in grove:
    My garden was the window-seat,
    Upon whose edge was set
    A little vase—the fair, the sweet—
    It was the violet.
    • The Violet from The Literary Souvenir, 1831
  • His shroud was damp, his face was white:
    He said,—"I cannot sleep,
    Your tears have made my shroud so wet;
    Oh, mother, do not weep!"
    Oh, love is strong!—the mother's heart
    Was filled with tender fears;
    Oh, love is strong!—and for her child
    Her grief restrained its tears.
    • The Little Shroud from The London Literary Gazette (28th April 1832)
  • The shadow of the church falls o'er the ground,
    Hallowing its place of rest; and here the dead
    Slumber, where all religious impulses,
    And sad and holy feelings, angel like,
    Make the spot sacred with themselves, and wake
    Those sorrowful emotions in the heart
    Which purify it, like a temple meet
    For an unearthly presence. Life, vain Life,
    The bitter and the worthless, wherefore here
    Do thy remembrances intrude?
  • Those sweet, vague sounds are on the air,
    Half sleep, half song--half false, half true,
    As if the wind that brought them there
    Had touched them with its music too.
  • For human tears are lava-drops,
    That scorch and wither as they flow;
    Then let them flow for those who live,
    And not for those who sleep below.
    • The Churchyard from The London Literary Gazette (3rd January 1829)
  • . . . the desolate
    Is doubly sorrowful when it recalls
    It was not always desolate.
    • Change from The London Literary Gazette (3rd January 1829)
  • To this fine spirit our earth owes her greatest:
    For the future is purchased by scorning the present,
    And life is redeemed from its clay soil by fame.
    * King, not a vestige remains of your palaces;
    Conqueror, forgotten the fame of your battles:
    But the Poet yet lives in the sweetness of music—
    He appeal'd to the heart, that never forgets.
    • The Three Brothers from The London Literary Gazette (20th June 1829) as Fame : An Apologue
  • Ah! it is well we can forget,
    Or who could linger on
    Beneath a sky whose stars are set,
    On earth whose flowers are gone?
    For who could welcome loved ones near,
    Thinking of those once far more dear,
  • It shock'd me first to see the sun
    Shine gladly o'er thy tomb;
    To see the wild flowers o'er it run
    In such luxuriant bloom.
    Now I feel glad that they should keep
    A bright sweet watch above thy sleep.
    • The Forgotten One from The Keepsake, 1831 [Probably refers to Letitia's little sister, Elizabeth]
  • The heavy bridge confines your stream,
    Through which the barges toil,
    Smoke has shut out the sun's glad beam,
    Thy waves have caught the soil.
    On—on—though weariness it be,
    By shoal and barrier cross'd,
    Till thou hast reach'd the mighty sea,
    And there art wholly lost.
    • The Altered River from The Keepsake, 1829
  • A single grave! —the only one
    In this unbroken ground,
    Where yet the garden leaf and flower
    Are lingering around.
    • The Single Grave from The London Literary Gazette (29th August 1829)
  • THE fountain's low singing is heard on the wind,
    Like a melody bringing sweet fancies to mind;
    Some to grieve, some to gladden: around them they cast
    The hopes of the morrow, the dreams of the past.
    Away in the distance is heard the vast sound,
    From the streets of the city that compass it round,
    Like the echo of mountains, or ocean's deep call;
    Yet that fountain's low singing is heard over all.
    • The Middle Temple Gardens

Traits and Trials of Early Life (1836)

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  • This volume was written for children. Miss Landon set out its purpose in the preface.

Preface

  • Sympathy is the surest destruction of selfishness. Children, like the grown person, grow the better for participation in the sufferings where their own only share is pity.

The Twin Sisters

  • ... happiness is not for this world — a conviction that cannot be too soon acquired : it will destroy a thousand vain expectations, dissipate the most perplexing of our illusions — the early knowledge that life is but a trial, whose triumph is hereafter, and this earth a place appointed for that sorrow and patient endurance which is gradually fitting us for a better and a happier state.
  • There are always an ample sufficiency of compassionate neighbours ready to console one who, by common consent, is styled "the disconsolate widower.”
  • Selfishness is hypocritical by nature, and seizes on the first decent excuse as a cloak ;
  • ... any one who has noticed may have observed that the weeping of grown up persons produces a sensation of awe on the mind of a child. Accustomed to associate the idea of superiority with that of their elders, they cannot understand their giving way to the same emotions as themselves.
  • What a duty it is to cultivate a pleasant manner ! how many a meeting does it make cheerful which would otherwise have been stupid and formal! We do not mean by this the mere routine of polite observance, but we mean that general cheerfulness which, like the sunshine lights up whatever it touches, that attention to others which discovers what subject is most likely to interest them, and that information which, ready for use, is easily laid under contribution by the habit of turning all resources to immediate employ. In short, a really pleasant manner grows out of benevolence, which can be as much shown in a small courtesy as in a great service.
  • Nothing discourages a child so much as the impossibility of pleasing.
  • I believe the love of flowers to be as inherent in the disposition as any other inclination.
  • How many children, discontented with the exercise of needful authority, might learn submission and thankfulness from the lot of others ; such a temper as that we have been describing is very uncommon ; the treatment of children oftener errs on the side of over-indulgence than aught else. How many might be taught better to appreciate the blessings which surround them by considering what some, less fortunate than themselves, are called upon to endure !

The History of Mable Dacre's First Lessons

  • Now, bitter, but useful, mortification is the steppingstone to knowledge, even in a child.
  • Expectation makes a long delay.
  • All beginnings are very troublesome things.
  • ... we all know mysteries are very fascinating things.

The Indian Island

Frances Beaumont

  • November's night is dark and drear,
    The dullest month of all the year.
  • Children are too often unkind to one another, and deny the allowance they so much need in their own case.
  • In moments of great anxiety there is a sort of natural superstition about the heart, which the reason rejects in cooler moments.

The History of a Child

  • To know yourself less beloved than you love, is a dreadful feeling
  • It was an epoch in my life, it is an epoch in every child's life, the first reading of Robinson Crusoe.
  • We read of the gales that bear from the shores of Ceylon the breathings of the cinnamon groves.
  • The poor child, as Charles Lamb so touchingly expresses it, is not brought, but "dragged out," and if the wits are sharpened, so, too, is the soft, round cheek. The crippled limb and broken constitution attest the effects of the over-early struggle with penury; but the child of rich parents suffers, though in another way; there is the heart that is crippled, by the selfishness of indulgence and the habit of relying upon others. It takes years of harsh contact with the realities of life to undo the enervating work of a spoilt and over aided childhood. We cannot too soon learn the strong and useful lessons of exertion and self-dependance.

Poetry

  • The Little Boy’s Bed-Time See under Translations
  • She said “Oh rather thank thy God,
    My lot is not thine own.
    How would my weary feet rejoice
    Like thine to walk and run
    Over the soft and fragrant grass,
    Beneath yon cheerful sun.
    And yet I trust to God's good will
    My spirit is resign'd ;
    Though sore my sickness, it is borne
    At least with patient mind.
    Though noble be my father's name,
    And vast my father's wealth;
    He would give all, could he but give
    His only child thy health !
    Ah, judge not by the outside show
    Of this world, vain and frail —”
    • The Lady Marian
  • “You said in our old ash-tree a bird had built its nest ;
    Perhaps this very linnet has there its place of rest.
    Now who will keep his little ones when night begins to fall ?
    They have no other shelter, and they will perish all.
    There'll be no more sweet singing within that lonely grove ;
    Now, Henry, free your prisoner, I pray you, for my love.
    Our father is a soldier, and in some distant war
    He too might be a prisoner in foreign lands afar.”
    • The Prisoner
  • “But our bird knew not of the free blue air,
    He had lived in his cage, and his home was there :
    No flight had he in the green wood flown —
    He pined not for freedom he never had known !
    If he had lived amid leaf and bough
    It had been cruel to fetter him now ;
    For I have seen a poor bird die,
    And all for love of his native sky.”
    • The Dead Robin

Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book (1837)

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Elizabeth Landon describes Lake Como with melancholy for having broken her love with the critic John Forster, with whom she was in love for a long time on Lake Como.

The Lake of Como

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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.

I see the quiet evening lights

Amid the distant mountains shine;

I hear the music of a lute,

It used to come from thine.

How can another sing the song,

The sweet sad song that was thine own

It is alike, yet not the same,

It has not caught thy tone.

Ah, never other lip may catch

The sweetness round thine own that clung;

To me there is a tone unheard,

There is a chord unstrung.

Thou loveliest lake, I sought thy shores,

That dreams from other days might cast,

The presence elsewhere sought in vain,

The presence of the past.

I find the folly of the search,

Thou bringest but half the past again;

My pleasure calling faintly back

Too vividly my pain.

Too real the memories that haunt

The purple shadows round thy brink—

I only ask'd of thee to dream,

I did not ask to think.

False beauty haunting still my heart,

Though long since from that heart removed;

These waves but tell me how thou wert

Too well and vainly loved.

Fair lake, it is all vain to seek

The influence of thy lovely shore—

I ask of thee for hope and love—

They come to me no more.

The London Literary Gazette

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1821-1822

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  • How sweet on the breeze of the evening swells
    The vesper call of those soothing bells,
    Borne softly and dying in echoes away,
    Like a requiem sung to the parting day.
    • (22nd September 1821) Bells
  • He must be rich whom I could love,
    His fortune clear must be,
    Whether in land or in the funds,
    'Tis all the same to me.
    • (10th November 1821) Six Songs of Love, Constancy, Romance, Inconstancy, Truth, and Marriage - 'Matrimonial Creed'
    • (24th November 1821) Stanzas see The Improvisatrice (1824) as When Should Lovers Breathe Their Vows?
  • Then gaze not on other eyes, Love ;
    Breathe not other sighs, Love ;
    You may find many a brighter one
    Than your own rose, but there are none
    So true to thee, Love.
    • (5th January 1822) Song ("Are other eyes beguiling, Love?")
  • These are thy bridal flowers
    I am now wreathing;
    This is thy marriage hymn
    I am now breathing.
    • (12th January 1822) Sketch the first ("There are dark yew-trees gathered round, beneath")
  • The path was new, and there was thrown
    A sweet veil over pleasure's ray ;
    But ignorance is happiness,
    When young Hope is to show the way;
    • (12th January 1822) Ten Years Ago.
  • A blossom full of promise is life's joy,
    That never comes to fruit; hope, for a time,
    Suns the young floweret in its gladsome light,
    And it looks flourishing—a little while,
    Tis past, we know not whither, but 'tis gone—
    • (19th January 1822) Poetic Sketches, No.2
  • Oh, blessedness !
    To see the fair creations of the thought
    Assume a visible form ; sweet Poesy !
    How witching is thy power upon the heart ;
    Enchantment that does bind our senses up
    In one unutterable influence ;
    A charmed spell set over every thought,
    Till life's whole hope is cast upon the lyre.
    • (26th January 1822) Poetic Sketches, No.3
  • One rich light
    Broke thro' the shadow of the tempest's wing,
    While the black clouds, with gold and purple edged,
    Caught every moment warmer hues, until
    'Twas all one sparkling arch, and, like a king
    In triumph o'er his foes, the Sun god sought
    The blue depths of the sea ; — the waters yet
    Were ruffled with the storm, and the white foam
    Yet floated on the billows, while the wind
    Murmured at times like to an angry child,
    Who sobs even in his slumber.
    • (2nd February 1822) Poetic Sketches, No.4
  • Down swept the gathered waters over rocks
    Which broke at times the column's foaming line ;
    Darkening amid the snow-white froth, it swept
    Like an all conquering army, and an arch
    Of sparkling hues that in the sunbeams played
    Seemed to unite it with the sky which hung
    Above all calmness and repose :
    • (16th February 1822) Poetic Sketches, No.6
  • Ah, deeply the Minstrel has felt all he sings,
    Every passion he paints his own bosom has known ;
    No note of wild music is swept from the strings,
    But first his own feelings have echoed the tone.
    • (27th April 1822) The Poet
    • (4th May 1822) Sappho see The Vow of the Peacock (1835)
  • We met in secret : mystery is to love
    Like perfume to the flower ; the maiden's blush
    Looks loveliest when her cheek is pale with fear.
    • (18th May 1822) Poetic Sketches. Second Series - Sketch the Third. Rosalie
    • (25th May 1822) St. George’s Hospital, Hyde Park Corner see The Improvisatrice (1824)
  • It was a beautiful embodied thought,
    A dream of the fine painter, one of those
    That pass by moonlight o'er the soul, and flit
    'Mid the dim shades of twilight, when the eye
    Grows tearful with its ecstasy.
    • (1st June 1822) Poetic Sketches. Second Series - Sketch the Fifth. Mr. Martin’s Picture of Clytie
    • (8th June 1822) The Deserter see The Improvisatrice (1824)
  • Look upon that hour-marked round,
    Listen to that fateful sound ;
    There my silent hand is stealing.
    My more silent course revealing ;
    Wild, devoted Pleasure, hear, —
    Stay thee on thy mad career !
    • (27th July 1822) Sketches from Drawings by Mr. Dagley. Sketch the First. Time arresting the Career of Pleasure.
  • Thrice venomed is the wound when 'tis Love's hand
    Inflicts the blow.
    • (3rd August 1822) Sketches from Drawings by Mr. Dagley. Sketch the Second. Love touching the Horns of a Snail, which is shrinking from his hand.
  • The Painter's skill has seized a moment where
    Her hand is wreathing mid his raven hair;
    And he is bent in worship, as that touch,
    That soft light touch, were ecstasy too much.
    He is just turned from that bewildering face
    To the fair arm that holds the magic vase —
    The purple liquor is just sparkling up —
    The youth has pledged his heart's truth on that cup!
    • (10th August 1822) Sketches from Drawings by Mr. Dagley. Sketch the Third. The Cup of Circe
  • A light compliment was never yet breathed by love.
  • A man above thirty cannot enter into the wild visions of an enthusiastic girl.
  • Love has no power to look forward — the delicious consciousness of the present, a faint but delightful shadow of the past, form its eternity.
    • (18th August 1822) These from a prose sketch - Isadore
  • Alas, the strange varieties or life !
    We live 'mid perils and pleasures, like
    Characters 'graven on the sand, or hues
    Colouring the rainbow. Wild as a sick fancy
    And changeful as a maiden, is this dream,
    This brief dream on earth - - - -
    • (7th September 1822) Poetical Sketches. Third series - Sketch the First. The Mine
    • (14th September 1822) Poetical Sketches. Third series - Sketch the Second. Gladesmuir see The Improvisatrice (1824)
    • (21st September 1822) Poetical Sketches. Third series - Sketch the Third. The Minstrel of Portugal see The Improvisatrice (1824)
    • (28th September 1822) Poetical Sketches. Third series - Sketch the Fourth. The Castilian Nuptuals see The Vow of the Peacock (1835)
    • (5th October 1822) Poetical Sketches. Third series - Sketch the Fifth. The Lover's Rock see The Vow of the Peacock (1835)
    • (12th October 1822) Poetical Sketches. Third series - Sketch the Sixth. The Basque girl and Henri Quatre see The Improvisatrice (1824)
  • My heart is with thee, Iove ! though now
    Thou'rt far away from me :
    I envy even my own thoughts,
    For they may fly to thee.
    • (19th October 1822) Songs of Absence
  • [Julian - disguised]
    The hunter turns not
    Despairing from the chase because the deer
    Flies from his pursuit : every obstacle
    Becomes a pleasure.
  • [Julian - disguised]
    Oh, jealousy is but
    A shadow cast from vanity, which lain
    Would take the shape of love to hide its own
    Selfish deformity !
  • [Julian]
    Why did I try a faith I should have known
    Spotless as the white dove. I cannot feel
    The beating of her heart. I'll kiss the colour
    Back to her cheek. Oh, God ! her lip is ice —
    There is no breath upon it ! —
    AGNES, thy JULIAN is thy murderer !
    • (26th October 1822) Dramatic Scene I
    • (2nd November 1822) Dramatic Scene II see The Vow of the Peacock (1835) Bacchus and Ariadne
    • (16th November 1822) Fragments in Rhyme I: The Soldier's Funeral see The Improvisatrice (1824)
    • (16th November 1822) Fragments in Rhyme II: Lines Written under a Picture of a Girl Burning a Love Letter see The Improvisatrice (1824)
  • Words are powerless to tell. —
    Such the image in my heart, —
    Painter, try thy glorious art !
    • (16th November 1822) Fragments in Rhyme III: Outline for a Portrait
    • (23rd November 1822) Fragments in Rhyme IV: Arion see The Improvisatrice (1824)
  • Never day-beam hath shone o'er
    Lovelier or wilder shore !
    Half was land, and half was sea
    Where the eye could only see
    The blue sky for boundary.
    • (30th November 1822) Fragments in Rhyme V: the Happy Isle
    • (7th December 1822) Fragments in Rhyme VI: The Painter's Love see The Improvisatrice (1824)
    • (14th December 1822) Fragments in Rhyme VII: Manmadin, The Indian Cupid. Floating down the Ganges see The Improvisatrice (1824)
    • (21st December 1822) Fragments in Rhyme IX: The Female Convict see The Improvisatrice (1824)
  • There is a flower, a magical flower,
    On which love hath laid a fairy power ;
    Gather it on the eve of St. John,
    When the clock of the village is tolling one ;
    Let no look be turned, no word be said,
    And lay the rose-leaves under your head ;
    Your sleep will be light, and pleasant your rest,
    For your visions will be of the youth you love best.
    • (28th December 1822) Fragments in Rhyme X: The Eve of St. John
    • (28th December 1822) Fragments in Rhyme XI: The Emerald Ring — a Superstition see The Improvisatrice (1824)

1823

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  • Oh this is not that sweet love
    Own companion to the dove ;
    But a wild and wandering thing,
    Varying as the lights that fling
    Radiance o'er his peacock's wing.
    I do weep, that Love should be
    Ever linked with Vanity.
    • (25th January 1823) Medallion Wafers: Cupid Riding on a Peacock
  • Dark night,
    Oh terrible is thy shadow on the battle !
    Blows dealt alike on friend and foe, the dead ,
    And dying trampled on— oh, day alone
    Should look upon the soldier's deeds !
    • (1st February 1823) The Cadets. An Indian Sketch
  • Glorious Bard ! to whom belong
    Wreaths not often claimed by song,
    Those hung round the warrior's shield—
    Laurels from the blood-red field.
    • (8th February 1823) Medallion Wafers: Head of Tyrtëus
  • She held the cup ; and he the while
    Sat gazing on her playful smile,
    As all the wine he wished to sip
    Was one kiss from her rosebud lip.
    • (8th February 1823) Medallion Wafers: Hercules and Iole
    • (22nd February 1823) Leander and Hero see The Vow of the Peacock (1835)
    • (1st March 1823) An Old Man over the Body of his Son see The Vow of the Peacock (1835)
  • Pictures, bright pictures, oh ! they are to me
    A world for thought to revel in. I love
    To give a history to every face, to think —
    As I thought with the painter — as I knew
    What his high communing had been.
  • Ah, Woman has no look so sweet
    As that, when, half afraid to meet
    The look she loves, blushes betray
    All the suppressed glance would say.
    • (15th March 1823) Poetical Catalogue of Pictures. Vandyke consulting his Mistress on a Picture in Cooke's Exhibition.
  • Sweet Hope ! every pleasant flower
    Suns itself in thy glad power ;
    Every sorrow comes to thee,
    Desart fount for Misery !
    • (15th March 1823) Poetical Catalogue of Pictures. Hope, from a design by a Lady.
  • Thou shalt bid thy fair hands rove
    O'er thy soft lute's silver slumbers,
    Waking sounds; of song and love
    In their sweet Italian numbers.
    • (29th March 1823) Song - I'll meet thee at the midnight hour
  • All over the world with thee, my love !
    All over the world with thee ;
    I care not what sky may low'r above,
    Or how dark our path may be.
    • (29th March 1823) Song - All over the world with thee, my love !
  • The dream on the pillow,
    That flits with the day,
    The leaf of the willow
    A breath wears away;
    The dust on the blossom,
    The spray on the sea;
    Ay,—ask thine own bosom—
    Are emblems of thee.
    • (29th March 1823) Song - The dream on the pillow.
  • What was our parting ?—one wild kiss,
    How wild I may not say,
    One long and breathless clasp, and then
    As life were past away.
    • (29th March 1823) Song - What was our parting ?—one wild kiss,
  • For many years he has not breathed the air,
    The wholesome open air ; the sun, the moon,
    The stars, the clouds, the fair blue heaven, the spring,
    The flowers, the trees, and the sweet face of man,
    Song, or words yet more musical than song,
    Affections, feelings, social intercourse
    (Unless remembered in his fairy dreams)
    Have all been strangers to his solitude ! —
    A curse is set on him, like poverty,
    Or leprosy, or the red plague, but worse, —
    The heart has sent its fire up to the brain,
    And he is mad.
    • (5th April 1823) Poetical Catalogue of Pictures. A Maniac visited by his Family in confinement : by Davis.
    • (5th April 1823) April see The Vow of the Peacock (1835)
  • [From Ianthe]
    I am a miser
    Of all thy thoughts and words, and looks and feelings—
    Oh, I am jealous of a leaf, a flower,
    A song, a star, if much thought on by thee !
  • [Guido] Oh, my Ianthe, I live but in you,
    And I will win thee, through each obstacle
    By tyranny of fortune raised, my own,
    My best heart's treasure ! (he snatches her hand)
    [Manfred] Wild fool ! she is your sister !
    • (12th April 1823) Dramatic Scene. Ianthe — Guido — Manfred.
    • (19th April 1823) Fragments see The Improvisatrice (1824) The Oak
  • Do any thing but love ; or if thou lovest
    And art a Woman, hide thy love from him
    Who thou dost worship ; never let him know
    How dear he is ; flit like a bird before him, —
    Lead him from tree to tree, from flower to flower ;
    But be not won, or thou wilt, like that bird,
    When caught and caged, be left to pine neglected,
    And perish in forgetfulness.
    • (26th April 1823) Fragment - Do any thing but love ; or if thou lovest
  • Beautiful and radiant May,
    Is not this thy festal day ?
    Is not this spring revelry
    Held in honour, Queen, of thee ?
    • (3rd May 1823) Poetical Catalogue of Paintings - On May-day, by Leslie
  • Wouldst thou know what life should be?
    Were it mine but to decree
    What its path should be for Thee ?
    Look upon those sister powers,
    Chained, but only chained with flowers, —
    That bright group of rose-winged Hours
    • (3rd May 1823) Poetical Catalogue of Paintings - The Hours, by Howard.
  • On a bough,
    The only one chained by the honeysuckle,
    Sat two white Doves, upon each neck a tint
    Like the rose-stain within the delicate shell
    Of the sea-pearl, as Love breathed on their plumes.
    And each was mirror'd in the other's eyes,
    Floating and dark, a paradise of passion.
    • (10th May 1823) Poetical Catalogue of Paintings - Two Doves in a Grove. Mr. Glover's Exhibition.
    • (24th May 1823) Inez see The Improvisatrice (1824)
  • There is no tie
    Like that last holiest link of love, which binds
    The lonely child to its more lonely parent.
    • (5th July 1823) A Tale Founded on Fact
    • (12th July 1823) Glencoe see The Vow of the Peacock (1835)
    • (19th July 1823) Execution of Crescentius see The Improvisatrice (1824) Crescentius
  • Beauty should be around the beautiful.
  • A soft and blue Italian sky, — the blue
    That painters and that poets love, — the blue
    The lover worships in the maiden's eyes,
    Whose beauty is their power and spell.
  • And round the walls were Pictures : some calm scenes
    Of Earth's green loveliness, and some whose hues
    Were caught from faces in whose smile our life
    Is one of Paradise ; and Statues, whose white grace
    Is as a dream of poetry.
  • Oh Genius! fling aside thy starry crown,
    Close up thy rainbow wings, and on thy head
    Lay dust and ashes — for, this cold drear world
    Is but thy prison-house. Alas for him
    Who has thy dangerous gifts, for they are like
    The fatal ones that evil spirits give, —
    Bright and bewildering, leading unto death.
    • (26th July 1823) The Artist’s Studio
  • The moon is darkened in the sky
    As if grief 's shade were passing by;
  • I envy thee, thou careless wind !
    How light, how wild thy wandering :
    Thou hast no earthly chain, to bind
    One fetter on thy airy wing.
    • (2nd August 1823) both from Songs
  • Gentlest one, I bow to thee,
    Rose-lipp'd queen of poesy,
    Sweet Erato, thou whose chords
    Waken but for love-touched words !
    • (9th August 1823) Poetical Catalogue of Pictures. Stothard’s Erato
    • (23rd August 1823) Change see The Improvisatrice (1824)
    • (30th August, 6th and 13th September 1823) The Bayadere see The Improvisatrice (1824)
  • Come, gentle harp, and let me hold
    Communion with thy melody,
    And be my tale of sorrow told
    To thee, my harp, and only thee.
    • (27th September 1823) Extracts from my Pocket Book. Song
  • I will look on the stars and look on thee,
    and read the page of thy destiny.
    • (11th October 1823) The Gipsy's Prophecy.
    • (25th October 1823) Sketch see The Improvisatrice (1824) The Warrior
    • (15th November 1823) Poetic Sketches. Fourth Series. Sketch I. — The Painter. See The Vow of The Peacock
    • (6th December 1823) Poetic Sketches. Fourth Series. Sketch IV.— A Village Tale. See The Vow of the Peacock
  • A summer isle, one over which the wind
    Hath ever pass'd in melody,— such airs
    As are born in the rose's breast, and die
    Like singing on the waters.
  • There grew ten thousand flowers, on whose leaves
    Shone every hue that ever yet hath shone
    In a king's diadem of Indian gems,
    Or in the tints an autumn sunset throws
    O'er the rich glaciers in the rainbow arch
    Of the departing shower ;
  • No other language than some soft sweet sounds
    She had caught from the voices of the birds
    When singing to the morning, and the notes
    Sent from the waterfall, when, like a harp,
    It held discourse in music with the wind.
  • To what may youth's first joyance be compared ?
    To daylight, and the glad song of the lark
    Bursting together, — to a sudden gush
    Of perfume, till the giddy senses link
    With overmuch delight,— a dream,— a tale
    Of Paradise, told in fair poesy.
    • (13th December 1823) Poetic Sketches. Fourth Series. Sketch V.— The Island.

1824

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    • (24th January 1824) Fragments 4th Series. First poem: In The Vow of the Peacock as The Thessalian Fountain
  • Rode by radiant shapes that seem
    Creatures made of bloom and beam,
    With their hair and plumes' gay dyes
    Glorious as the morning skies.
  • But as old tradition tells,
    There are other, deeper, spells
    In the lone and mystic wells —
    Spells of strange wild augury
    Few have had the heart to try. —
  • To hide the wells from the beam of the sun,
    She took the webs of silvery white
    Herself had wove in the lone moonlight,
    And threw them o'er, so that not one ray
    Could lighten their depths with a glimpse of day;
  • My spell is done, my prize is won ;
    True love! thou hast equal none;
    True love ! who could choose for thee
    Gold or gems or vanity ?
    Where is the spell whose charm will prove,
    Like the spell of thy charm, true love ?
    • (28th February 1824) Metrical Tales. Tale I. The Three Wells - A Fairy Tale
  • 'Twas as she hoped, — he sleeps ; and now
    Her lips are on his throbbing brow,
    Sucking the poison forth : 't was bliss
    To know she gave her life for his.
    • (6th March 1824) Metrical Tales. Tale II. The Poisoned Arrow
    • (13th March 1824) Metrical Tales. Tale III. — The Sisters See The Vow of The Peacock
  • Yet, wake again, I pray thee, wake;
    My soul yet lives upon the chords —
    My heart must breathe its wrongs, or break :
    Yet can it find relief in words !
    • (20th March 1824) Metrical Tales. Tale IV.— The Troubadour
  • I dread the pictures of my dreams,
    For, then I gaze on thee;
    And thou art near, and thou art all
    That I would have thee be.
    And then I startle from my sleep,
    And know all false, and watch and weep.
    • (10th April 1824) Love in Absence
  • I've thought upon thy brow when Night
    Threw o'er my pallet her summer moonlight,
    And I have looked on the midnight sky
    To catch the depth and light of thy eye ;
    I painted from these and from memory,
    For I could not paint when I looked on thee.
    • (28th April 1824) Raphael Showing his Mistress her Portrait By Mr. Brockedon. (British Gallery.)
  • A luxury of deep repose ! the heart
    Must surely beat in quiet here.
  • God ! that this Earth should be so beautiful,
    And yet so wretched !
    • (28th April 1824) Moonlight. T. C. Hofland.
  • Race of the rainbow wing, the deep blue eye
    Whose palace was the bosom of a flower;
    Who rode upon the breathing of the rose ;
    Drank from the harebell ; made the moon the queen
    Of their gay revels ; and whose trumpets were
    The pink-veined honeysuckle; and who rode
    Upon the summer butterfly : who slept
    Lulled in the sweetness of the violet's leaves,—
    Where are ye now ? And ye of eastern tale,
    With your bright palaces, your emerald halls ;
    Gardens whose fountains were of liquid gold ;
    Trees with their ruby fruit and silver leaves,—
    Where are ye now ?
    • (12th June 1824) Stanzas
  • And then the lute, the lattice, and the girl,
    The white rose, and the melancholy song —
    Oh, Night, thy reign is over lovely things ! —
  • Oh, the heart
    Knows not the power of music till it loves !
  • Oh! moral of enjoyment! — scattered, crushed : —
    The pale checks of the few that staid, like ghosts
    Haunting the footsteps of departing mirth,
    While the bright pictures over them looked down
    Almost in mockery.
    • (17th July 1824) Poetic Sketches - 5th Series. Sketch the First. - Fidelity
  • Death has most awful lessons ! It is sad,
    Aye, strange, to see even the aged die ;
    But about youth there is a confidence
    In life, that makes it terrible.
  • The hope that clings to the least glimpse of blue
    Amid a sky of murkiness ; the fear
    That sickens at itself; the fond deceit,
    That will not see the truth ; the tenderness,
    That only asks to trust ; and, at the last,
    The knowledge we have known in vain so long
    Comes like a thunderbolt, and crashes.
    • (24th July 1824) Poetic Sketches - 5th Series. Sketch the Second. - Infidelity
    • (31st July 1824) Poetic Sketches - 5th Series. Sketch the Third.—The Knight’s Tale. See The Vow of The Peacock
  • But give me one curl of thy raven hair,
    And, by all thy hopes in heaven, swear
    That, chance what may thou wilt claim thy bride,
    And thou to-morrow shall lie by my side.
  • That day the youth was told the tale,
    How she had pined beneath the veil
    And died, and then they show'd her grave—
    He knew that cypress's green wave. —
    That night, alone, he watched his bride —
    The next they laid him by her side.
    • (18th September 1824) The Phantom Bride
  • And all was silence. — save when the wild bees.
    Intoxicate with their noon revelries,
    Murmuring, kiss'd the blossoms where they lay ;
    Or when the breeze bore a green leaf away;
    Or when the flutter of the cusha's wing
    Echoed its song of plaintive languishing —
    • (2nd October 1824) The Glen
  • The Lake was that deep blue, which night
    Wears in the zenith moon's full light;
    With pebbles shining thro', like gems
    Lighting sultana's diadems :
    • (2nd October 1824) The Lake
  • Last night I by my casement leant,
    And looked on the bright firmament;
    And marked a group of stars, which met,
    Almost as if on purpose set
    Together for their loveliness, —
    • (30th October 1824) The Stars
  • There is a flower, a purple flower
    Sown by the wind, nursed by the shower,
    O'er which Love has breathed a power and spell
    The truth of whispering hope to tell.
    (According to the Lady's Book of Flowers, 1842 , this is the centaury)
  • He loves not, he loves me, he loves me not,
    He loves me, — yes, thou last leaf, yes,
    I'll pluck thee not, for that last sweet guess!
    " He loves me,”
    • (13th November 1824) The Decision of the Flower
  • This mountain-ash, whose flower-fill'd boughs
    Spread like a cloud at noon —
    Whose shade is as a haunted place
    For the sweet airs of June :
    'Twas but a little shrub when first
    I wreathed amid thy hair
    Its berries, like the coral crown
    That the sea-maidens wear.
    • (20th November 1824) Constancy
  • Passing thus with time away,
    The sweet gifts of youth decay ;
    Fleet their blooms, thus one by one,
    Till their very form is gone ;
    Memory left but to declare
    How beautiful and sweet they were!
    In the first blue noon of Spring,
    Who can think on withering?
    • (25th December 1824) Faded Flowers

1825

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  • I made myself a little boat
    And launched it on the sea ;
    And into the wide world went forth
    To see what there might be.
    • (30th April 1825) Realities
  • I have a summer gift,
    A sunny gift for thee :
    See this white vase, where blooms
    A beautiful rose tree.
    And on its crimson leaves
    Your heart must moralize,
    For love a lesson takes
    Of every leaf that dies.
    • (14th May 1825) Song
  • Oh ! never should a woman's words be more
    Than sighs which have found utterance.
    • (5th June 1825) Portraits I
  • Happiness ! pleasure I should rather say,
    Happiness never made on earth a stay —
    • (5th June 1825) Portraits II
  • Who seeing the fair ship
    That swept through the bright waves.
    Would dream that tyrants trod her deck,
    And that her freight was slaves !
    • (20th August 1825) The Slave Ship (under the pen name Iole)
  • I would have rather been a slave
    In fettered bondage by thy side,
    Than shared in all the world could give,
    Had it not given thee beside.
    • (1st October 1825) Stanzas
  • I would resign the words of praise which now
    Make my cheek crimson and my pulses beat.
    Could I but deem that when my heart is cold
    And my lip passionless, my songs would be
    Numbered 'mid the young minstrels' first delights,
    And murmured by the lover where his suit
    Calls upon poetry to breathe of love.
    • [This passage is in Erinna, altered]
  • Life is a torrid day,
    Parched with the dust and sun ;
    And death's the calm cool night,
    When the weary day is done.
    • (17th December 1825) Poetic Fragmants - Fifth Series
  • It was a face, with nothing but the blush
    To mark it from the sculptured features round :
    As perfect in its beauty ; but the flush
    Of earthly warmth and earthly feeling crowned
    The master-piece of nature ;— that rich gush
    Was from the heart, which thus a language found,
    The eloquence of truth and silence ever : —
    Words, sighs, and smiles deceive, but blushes never.
    • (24th December 1825) Metrical Fragments - No.1 Anecdote of Canova (under the pen name Iole)

1826

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  • Where, oh, where's the chain to fling,
    One that will chain Cupid's wing—
    One that will have longer power
    Than the April sun or shower?
    • (14th January 1826) Lezione per l’Amore
  • There's feasting spread in gorgeous halls,
    The lamps flash round the city walls,
    And many a flood of lustre falls
    O'er many an honoured name.
    Turn thou from this, and enter where
    Some mother weeps o'er her despair,
    Some desolate bride rends her rich hair,
    Some orphan joins the cry !
    Then back again to the death plain,
    Where lie those whom they weep in vain,
    And ask, in gazing on the slain,
    What art thou, Victory ?
    • (21st January 1826) Io triumphe (under the pen name Iole)
  • Love is divine in our belief
    Of its eternity — how vain,
    When we have known that Love can die,
    To think that he can live again !
    • (4th February 1826) The Past (under the pen name Iole)
  • Her likeness ! why it is a vain endeavour
    To image it. Painting or words may never
    Say what she was ; yet dwell I on the task,
    As if that Poesy had a right to ask
    From Memory its treasure.
    • (25th March 1826) Ianthe. A Portrait (under the pen name Iole)
    • (25th March 1826) Moon See The Vow of the Peacock
  • The morning Sun arose —
    Still the festal board was spread —
    Still hosts and guests were round ;
    But hosts and guests were dead !
    • (22nd April 1826) The Death-Feast (under the pen name Iole)
  • Which is the best,
    Beauty and glory in a passionate clime,
    Mingled with thunder, tempest; — or the calm
    Of skies that scarcely change — which, at the least,
    If much of shine they have not, have no storms?
    • (20th May 1826) Life
  • We seek—we find—
    And find the charm has with the search declined.
    Affections—pleasures—all in which we trust, —
    What do they end in ?—Nothing, or disgust.
    • (1st July 1826) Moralising
  • I will not seek the battle-field —
    The men I there should meet,
    What have they done to me to make
    Shedding their life-blood sweet ?
    It is the veriest madness man
    In maddest mood can frame,
    To feed the earth with human gore,
    And then to call it fame.
    I have been wrong'd ; but were my wrong
    The deadliest wrong ere done,
    I would not slay my enemy,
    But bid him still live on :—
    And I should deem my vengeance more
    Than the death-wound in strife—
    What ills can death inflict like those
    Heap'd on each hour of life ?
    • (19th August 1826) Metrical Fragments - No. 1 (under the pen name Iole)
  • Harsh all earth's destinies, — but his most hard
    Who may not trust the praise he loves to hear —
    Who may not hold his fame sure till, too late,
    The seal of death and truth is set by fate.
  • She spoke, they were but a few hurried words —
    Of the sweet flowers around, the heat, the night —
    Yet were they such as the blest heart records
    For many an after-moment's long delight ;
    They touch'd upon his spirit's inmost chords ;
    Though broken was the sense, the accents light,
    Yet sweeter was to him that tremulous tone
    Than all that eloquence were proud to own.
    • (26th August 1826) Metrical Fragments No. II. Tasso’s last interview with the Princess Leonora. (under the pen name Iole)
  • He leapt upon his steed, and like the wind
    They speed them on ; at first his giddy brain
    Swam like a chaos— mystery of the mind
    Which would guide its own workings, but in vain :
  • He enter'd now the garden, and a fall
    Of singing, voice and lute, sank on his ear :
    At first it seem'd thrice sweet and musical,
    But it grew sadder as he came more near.
    • (9th September 1826) Metrical Fragments No. IV. - The Redeemed Captive (under the pen name Iole)
    • (16th September 1826) Metrical Fragments No. V. - The Frozen Ship (under the pen name Iole) see The Vow of the Peacock
  • The Dead ! the Dead ! and sleep they here,
    The lost of other years —
    The Dead ! the Dead ! can they be here,
    Where nought of Death appears ?
    • (7th October 1826) The Tumuli
  • Leaves grow green to fall,
    Flowers grow fair to fade,
    Fruits grow ripe to rot —
    All but for passing made.
    • (14th October 1826) Changes

1827

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    • (27th January 1827) Willow Leaves See under Translations
  • A thousand songs from a thousand boughs
    The glad birds' pleasure declare ;
    The rills are laughing in crystal light—
    For the presence of Spring is there.
    • (3rd March 1827) Birthday in Spring
  • Spirit of the midnight dream,
    What is now upon thy wing ?
    Earth sleeps in the moonlight beam ;
    O'er that sleep what wilt thou fling ?
    • (31st March 1827) The Spirit of Dreams
  • Glory of earth, and light from heaven,
    Young Genius ! but for thee,
    And the wild wonders to thee given,
    How base our earth would be !
    • (19th May 1827) Genius
  • Death came like a friend to restore thee
    To those who had died before thee:
    Father, mother,
    Sister, brother—
    There were none of these to mourn o'er thee.
    But now that Death has found thee,
    Thy kindred and friends are round thee ;
    In their rest they are laid
    In the dark yew shade,
    And cold sleep like their own has bound thee.
    • (18th August 1827) Euthanasia

1828

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    • (16th February 1828) The Change See The Vow of the Peacock
    • (16th February 1828) The Legacy of the Lute See The Vow of the Peacock

1829

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    • (3rd January 1829) The Churchyard See The Vow of the Peacock
    • (3rd January 1829) Change See The Vow of the Peacock
  • One of those gifted ones that walk the earth,
    Like angels in their beauty, and the while
    The air is filled with music from their wings.
    • (31st January 1829) Lines to the Author after Reading the Sorrows of Rosalie
  • . . . Oh! the heart
    Makes its own happiness, perchance the best,
    When consecrate to one engrossing love !
  • The shade fell darker from the clustering vine,
    Whose green boughs twined the lattice like a wreath ;
    The lark had ceased the musical glad laugh
    With which he hails the morning; note by note
    The matin song had died upon the wind;
    The dew which hung upon the cypresses
    Had turned to sunshine on the waving leaves;—
    • (14th February 1829) Lines on Newton’s Picture of the Disconsolate
  • We say that people and that things are changed;
    Alas ! it is ourselves that change : the heart
    Makes all around the mirror of itself.
  • Where are the flowers, the beautiful flowers,
    That haunted your homes and your hearts in the spring ?
    Where is the sunshine of earlier hours ?
    Where is the music the birds used to bring ?
    • (9th May 1829) Change
    • (20th June 1829) Fame : An Apologue See The Vow of the Peacock, as The Three Brothers
    • (29th August 1829) First Grave See The Vow of the Peacock as The Single Grave

1830

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    • (29th May 1830) The Festival See The Vow of the Peacock
    • (21st August 1830) The Aspen Tree See The Vow of the Peacock
    • (21st August 1830) Follow Me! See The Vow of the Peacock
  • Weep for life, with its toil and care,
    Its crime to shun, and its sorrow to bear ;
    Let tears and the sign of tears be shed
    Over the living, not over the dead !
    • (21st August 1830) The Legacy of the Roses

1831

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  • Its berries are red as a maiden's lip,
    Its leaves are of changeless green ;
    And any thing changeless now, I wis,
    Is somewhat rare to be seen.
    The holly, which fall and frost has borne,
    The holly's the wreath for a Christmas morn.
    • (1st January 1831) Christmas Carol
  • Let the rose fall, another rose
    Will bloom upon the self-same tree ;
    Let the bird die, ere evening close
    Some other bird will sing for me.
    It is for the beloved to love,
    'Tis for the happy to be kind ;
    Sorrow will more than death remove
    The associate links affections bind.
    • (2nd April 1831) Lines Supposed to be the Prayer of the Supplicating Nymph in Mr. Lawrence Macdonald’s Exhibition of Sculptures
  • Black (for such the quarries yield
    Where the sun hath never shone,
    Which night only rests upon,
    Was the marble floor, which gave
    Mirror like some clear dark wave.
  • Statues to whose rest seem'd given
    Not the life of earth but heaven ;
    For each statue here enshrined
    What in the immortal mind
    Makes its beauty and its power —
    Genius's eternal dower :
    • (25th June 1831) The Hall of Statues
  • His heart is like a maggot-eaten nut:
    There's nothing in it ; but 'tis closely shut.
    • (1st October 1831) Epigram of a Miser

1832

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  • Now out upon you, Christmas !
    Is this the merry time
    When the red hearth blazed, the harper sung,
    And the bells rung their glorious chime ? . . .
  • I saw an aged woman turn
    To her wretched home again —
    All day she had asked charity,
    And all day asked in vain. . . .
  • Is this the curse that is laid on the earth ?
    And must it ever be so,
    That there can be nothing of human good
    But must from some evil flow ? . . .
  • Then out on the folly of ancient times—
    The folly which wished you mirth :
    Look round on the anguish, look round on the vice,
    Then dare to be glad upon earth !
    • (14th January 1832) Christmas extracts
    • (28th April 1832) The Little Shroud See The Vow of the Peacock
  • The poets told thy birth
    Was welcomed upon earth
    By the sweet multitude of shining flowers,
    By bursting buds, green leaves, and sunny hours.
  • They know there must be May within the year,
    Else would they never dream that May was here.
    • (12th May 1832) Our Present May
  • Glorious and beautiful
    Were youth's feeling and youth's thought—
    Would that we did not annul
    All that in us then was wrought !
    Would their influence could remain
    When the hope and dream depart ;
    Would we might through life retain
    Still some youth within the heart !
    • (11th August 1832) Youth
  • Our sky has lost another star,
    The earth has claimed its own,
    And into dread eternity
    A glorious one is gone.
    He who could give departed things
    So much of light and breath,
    He is himself now with the past —
    Gone forth from life to death.
    • (29th September 1832) On the death of Sir Walter Scott

1833-1835

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  • Does the sweet morning rise,
    Bride-like, from sleep,
    When their first revelries
    Bird and bee keep,
    Singing out joyously
    In the green tree ?
    Then, when my hopes are high,
    Think I of thee.
    • (5th January 1833) Songs
  • Deep in the silent waters,
    A thousand fathoms low,
    A gallant ship lies perishing —
    She foundered long ago.
    • (12th January 1833) The Lost Ship
  • The clouds, and not the stars, to them
    The omen and the sign be given—
    The clouds, the vapours of our soil,
    Not stars, whose element is heaven.
    The deepening shade, the flitting light,
    Mark what each coming month will know—
    The passing joy, the constant care,
    Of life's sad pilgrimage below.
  • Those cheerful bells, how can they bid
    A welcome to the new-born Year?
    I think on what the past has been ;
    I cannot hope—I only fear.
    • (4th January 1834) The New Year
  • And there the lovely Lily grew,
    The summer's purest flower,
    And many a tiny fairy knew
    The shelter of its bower,
    • (7th June 1834) The History of the Lily
    • (25th October 1834) The Exile. See under Translations from the French
    • (1835) For Versions from the German, see under Translations from the German

The Monthly Magazine

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Living Literary Characters, No. V. - Edward Lytton Bulwer (1831-1) Volume 31 page 437

  • It is a fact not to be disputed, that the aristocracy have not "progressed " in proportion to the other classes. A young nobleman of the present day has not a better education than his ancestor in the time of Elizabeth.
  • Literary taste is often confounded with literary talent by others, quite as much as by ourselves.
  • Ridicule is the re-action of enthusiasm. Sentiment was considered confined to schools ; and, so far from affecting too much feeling, people were beginning to be ashamed of having any.
  • Life has little breathing time ; and, even when we do for a moment reflect, it is rather on our present than our past : the pains and pleasures of memory are put aside as quickly as the poem which celebrates them.
  • But wit cuts its bright way through the glass-door of public favour;
  • But preference, and its consequence, neglect, is the child's most cruel wrong. The bitter feeling of comparing our own lot with another's, will come quite soon enough without its being taught in infancy.

On the Ancient and Modern Influence of Poetry (1832-2) Volume 35 page 466

  • It is curious to observe how little one period resembles another. Centuries are the children of one mighty family, but here is no family-likeness between them.
  • The imagination, which is the source of poetry, has in every country been the beginning as well as the ornament of civilization. It civilizes because it refines.
  • We deny that poetry is fiction; its merit and its power lie alike in its truth:

The Story of Hester Malpas (1833-3) Volume 39 Page 463

  • There is a favourite in every family; and, generally speaking, that favourite is the most troublesome member in it.
  • He had married for love, under the frequent delusion of supposing that love will last under every circumstance most calculated to destroy it ; and, secondly, that it can supply the place of everything else.
  • Other sorrows soften the heart, — poverty hardens it. Nothing like poverty for chilling the affections and repressing the spirits. Its annoyances are all of the small and mean order ; its regrets all of a selfish kind ; its presence is perpetual ; and the scant meal, and the grudged fire, are repeated day by day, yet who can become accustomed to them ?
  • A woman always exaggerates her beauty and its influence when they are past ; and it was a perpetual grief to think what her pretty face might have done for her.
  • Everybody has some particular point on which they pique themselves ; generally something which ill deserves the pride bestowed upon it.
  • She had always thought she would be like her father, and fancied a tall, dark, and handsome face.

A Calendar of the London Seasons (1834-1) Volume 40 page 425

  • Philosophers are moral, and poets are picturesque about the country.
  • It is an unpleasant thing to differ in opinion with the rest of one's species — it is making a sort of North Pole of one's own, and then setting out in search of it.
  • I like to be candid in my admissions — it is so very disarming ; you forestall the objection which you admit — at least your adversary has scarcely the heart to push to its utmost the advantage which you so meekly confess.
  • Ah ! I appeal to all who have any sensibility — for themselves — how delightful it is to be called in the morning, yet not to obey that call. It combines two of the greatest enjoyments of which our nature is susceptible— obstinacy and indolence.
  • A London day requires to be well aired before it is ventured into.
  • If, even at three years old, we turn to the pleasures of memory, the less that is asserted about the felicity of childhood, the less there will be to dispute.
  • We enjoy no pleasure so much as we do tormenting ourselves.
  • Pattern love-letter — "I — I — I — you — you — you ; you — you — you — I — I — I," garnished with loves and doves ad libitum.
  • ... who cares for a general compliment more than a general lover.
  • ... we English people delight in a moral — not a moral to be deduced or inferred, but a nice, rounded, little moral, in all the starch of set sentences, and placed just at the end,
  • Perhaps it is a benevolent provision of Nature that we remember more what touches than what pains us.

On the Character of Mrs. Hemans's Writings (1835-2) Volume 44 page 425

  • There cannot be a greater error than to suppose that the poet does not feel what he writes. What an extraordinary, I might say, impossible view, is this to take of an art more connected with emotion than any of its sister sciences. What — the depths of the heart are to be sounded, its mysteries unveiled, and its beatings numbered by those whose own heart is made by this strange doctrine — a mere machine wound up by the clock-work of rhythm ! No ; poetry is even more a passion than a power, and nothing is so strongly impressed on composition as the character of the writer. I should almost define poetry to be the necessity of feeling strongly in the first instance, and the as strong necessity of confiding in the second.
  • Praise — actual personal praise— oftener frets and embarrasses than it encourages. It is too small when too near.
  • There is a well of melancholy poetry in every human bosom. We have all mourned over the destroyed illusion and the betrayed hope. We have quarrelled in some embittered moment with an early friend, and when too late lamented the estrangement.
  • In childhood, the impetus of conversation is curiosity. The child talks to ask questions. But one of its first lessons, as it advances, is that a question is an intrusion, and an answer a deceit.
  • Ridicule parts social life like an invisible paling ; and we are all of us afraid of the other. To this may be in great measure attributed the difference that exists between an author's writings and his conversation. The one is often sad and thoughtful, while the other is lively and careless. The fact is, that the real character is shown in the first instance, and the assumed in the second.
  • In this consists the difference between painting and poetry : the painter reproduces others, — the poet reproduces himself.
  • Did we not know this world to be but a place of trial — our bitter probation for another and for a better — how strange in its severity would seem the lot of genius in a woman. The keen feeling — the generous enthusiasm — the lofty aspiration — and the delicate perception — are given but to make the possessor unfitted for her actual position.
  • I always wish, in reading my favourite poets, to know what first suggested my favourite poems. Few things would be more interesting than to know under what circumstances they were composed, — how much of individual sentiment there was in each, or how, on some incident seemingly even opposed, they had contrived to ingraft their own associations. What a history of the heart would such annals reveal ! Every poem is in itself an impulse.
  • Fame to a woman is indeed but a royal mourning in purple for happiness.

The Love Charm (1835-3) Volume 45 page 156

  • Expectation is in itself a very pretty sort of reality.
  • They say suppers are very unwholesome, our grandfathers and grandmothers never discovered it ...
  • ... unshared mirth only damps the spirits of a small circle ...
  • The huge dome of St. Paul's arose bathed in the moonlight, that giant fane of a giant city, a hundred spires were shining silvery in the soft gleam, and all meaner objects were touched with a picturesque obscurity: all around was silence and rest. The myriad voices of London were still, and nothing vexed the lulled ear of midnight.
  • She was tall beyond the ordinary height of woman, but stately in her grace as the ideal of a queen and the reality of a swan. Her arms and feet were bare, but for the gems which encircled them. A white robe swept around her in folds gathered at the waist by a golden girdle inscribed with signs and characters. Her hair was singularly thick, and of that purple blackness seen on the grape and the neck of the raven — black, with a sort of azure bloom upon it. It was fastened in large folds, which went several times round the head, and these were adorned with jewels and precious stones, like a midnight lighted with stars. Her complexion was a pale pure olive, perfectly colourless, but delicate as that of a child. Her mouth was the only spot where the rose held dominion, and lips of richer crimson never opened to the morning.
  • The very sound of his own steps disturbed him ; and he flung himself on a couch, to enjoy without interruption the exquisite melody. The intense perfume of the flowers intoxicated him like wine. He felt as if lulled in a delicious trance, in which one image became more and more distinct — the pale but lovely face of his hostess. His heart was filling with love for those radiant eyes. A softer fragrance breathed around him — it was her breath. He looked, and she was again bending over him ; he saw himself mirrored in the moonlight of her eyes.

Mildred Pemberton (1836-1) Volume 46 page 309

  • On this subject any general rule is impossible ; love, like the chamelion, is coloured by the air in which it lives — and the finer the air the richer the colour. Some young ladies have a happy facility of falling in and out of love; their heart, like a raspberry tart, is covered with crosses.
  • He was wrong, as all are who rouse the passive resistance of a woman's nature. The indignity and violence with which she was treated only made her turn more fondly to the shelter of the loving heart she believed was so truly her own. Kindness might have brought her to her father's feet, ready to give up her dearest hopes for his sake; but his harsh anger only made her tremble at the hopeless future.
  • A woman whose lover resigns her, and as if for her own sake, though without consulting her, is placed in a most awkward situation. What can she do ? Take him at his word ? That is easy to say, but hard to do, when all the hopes and affections are garnered in his love.
  • Always accustomed to wealth, she did not understand its value ; we must want money to really know its worth, and money seemed to her the vilest consideration that could have influence.

An Old Lady of the Last Century (1836-1) Volume 46 page 421

  • In endeavouring to recall a few memorials of Mrs. Lawrence Burgoyne, I do it on the same principle that scientific men collect the bones of a mammoth — the whole exists no longer ; but there are sufficient remains to show that it did exist.
  • Mrs. Burgoyne passed the last twenty years of her life in a large, solemn-looking house at Kensington ; it is now a mad-house. How curiously do these changes in dwelling places, once cheerful and familiar, bring the mutability of our existence home ! It would be an eventful chronicle, the history of even a few of the old-fashioned houses in the vicinity of London. You ascended a flight of steps, with a balustrade and two indescribable birds on either side, and a large hall, which, strange to say, was more cheerful in winter than in summer. In summer the narrow windows, the black wood with which it was panelled, seemed heavy and dull ; but in winter the huge fire gave its own gladness, and had besides the association with old English hospitality which a blazing grate always brings. You passed next through two long drawing-rooms, whose white wainscoting was almost covered with family portraits. There cannot be much said for the taste of Queen Anne's time downwards — bagged, wigged, and hooped ; there was not a picture of which the African's question might not have been asked, "Pray tell me, white woman, if this is all you?”
  • Indeed it is a doubtful fact whether clever people are ever very agreeable ; they are too much absorbed by one particular pursuit, to bound lightly enough over those generalities which are the stepping-stones of conversation ; they feel as if they ought to say something worth remembering.

A Friend in Need is a Friend Indeed (1836-2) Volume 47 page 41

  • Charles went towards the table, but he had no lady-like powers of filling four sheets with nothing, and the letter was soon sealed.
  • Again he was thrown upon his resources; which have always appeared to me the very worst things on which an unfortunate individual can be thrown in the way of amusement.
  • A will of his own in a young man without a shilling is a superfluity,
  • Three hackney-coaches, and two women in patterns passed by; also a man with an umbrella dripping, which he held rather over a brown paper parcel than himself: at last, a bright spot appeared just above the palace, the rain seemed to melt into luminous streaks on the sky, and the rain-drops that had sprinkled all over the panes of glass began to gather into two or three large drops, and to descend slowly along the surface. They would have done to bet upon, but there was no one to bet with.
  • Now I hold that necessity merits more amiable adjectives;--what a great deal of trouble is saved thereby. To an undecided person like myself, the inevitable is invaluable.
  • Charles coloured, from “a complication of disorders.” First he was quite shy enough to be annoyed at its being supposed that he cared whether there were any young ladies in the world or not; and, secondly, he was quite romantic enough to be shocked at the idea of money supplying the want of a pretty face.
  • Fanshawe began to talk of the weather; and his auditor was fairly astonished to find how much he had to say about it. He had all but counted the rain-drops; and he was quite aware of every gleam of sunshine that they had had since the morning.
  • ...that worst bump developed that can adorn the head of a bore--viz., long-story-tellativeness.

The Bride of Lindorf (1836-2) Volume 47 page 449

  • Midnight is a wonderful thing in a vast city—and midnight was upon Vienna. The shops were closed, the windows darkened, and the streets deserted—strange that where so much of life was gathered together there could be such deep repose; yet nothing equals the stillness of a great town at night. Perhaps it is the contrast afforded by memory that makes this appear yet more profound. In the lone valley, and in the green forest, there is quiet even at noon—quiet, at least, broken by sounds belonging alike to day and night. The singing of the bee and the bird, or the voice of the herdsman carolling some old song of the hills—these may be hushed; but there is still the rustle of the leaves, the wind murmuring in the long grass, and the low perpetual whisper of the pine. But in the town—the brick and mortar have no voices of their own. Nature is silent—her soft, sweet harmonies are hushed in the great human tumult—man, and man only, is heard. Through many hours of the twenty-four, the ocean of existence rolls on with a sound like thunder—a thousand voices speak at once. The wheels pass and re-pass over the stones—music, laughter, anger, the words of courtesy and of business, mingle together—the history of a day is the history of all time. The annals of life but repeat themselves.
  • The generality labour under the delusion, that when they have lighted and filled their rooms, they have done their all. They never were more in error. Lighting is much—crowding is much also—but there lacks “something more exquisite still.” This something the countess possessed in its perfection. Any can assemble a crowd, but few can make it mingle.
  • [From Ernest von Hermanstadt]; Action—action in the sunshine—passion—but little feeling, and less thought: such was meant to be our existence. But we refine—we sadden and we subdue—we call up the hidden and evil spirits of the inner world—we wake from their dark repose those who will madden us. The heart is like the wood on yonder flickering hearth: green and fresh, haunted by a thousand sweet odours, bathed in the warm air, and gladdened by the summer sunshine—so grew it at first upon its native soil. But nature submitteth to art, and man has appointed for it another destiny: it is gathered, and cast into the fire. It seems, then, as if its life had but just begun. A new spirit has crept into the kindled veins—a brilliant light dances around it—it is bright—it is beautiful—and it is consumed! What remains?—A warmth on the atmosphere soon passing away, and a heap of blackened ashes! What more will remain of the heart?
  • The influence of a woman's first love is felt on her whole after-existence: never can she dream such dream again. For a woman there is no second-love—youth, hope, belief, are all given to her first attachment; if unrequited, the heart becomes its own Prometheus, creative, ideal, but with the vulture preying upon it for ever.—If deceived, the whole poetry of life is gone; the very essence of poetry is belief, and how can she, whose sweet eager credulity has once learnt the bitter truth—that its reliance was in vain, how can she ever believe again?
  • Huge bodies of vapour—a storm in each—were hurrying over a sky, dashed alike with the hues of the tempest and the morning; some of the vapours were of inky blackness, others spread like a scroll of royal purple; some undulated with the light struggling through, others were of transparent whiteness; but those upon the east were of a deep crimson—and the round, red sun had just mounted above an enormous old cedar. Red hues were cast upon everything; even the lilies blushed, and the waters of the little fountain were like melted rubies...
  • But the words of lovers are a language apart; their melody is a fairy song departing with the one haunted hour; to repeat it is to make it commonplace—cold, yet we can all remember it.
  • [From Minna after stabbing Pauline von Lindorf to death]: Yes, I have killed her at last. They thought I did not know her, but I did. She took away my father's heart from me, and would have taken away my husband's; but I have killed her at last.

The Criticism of Chateaubriand (1836-3) Volume 48 page 62

  • Take the actions of our nearest friends, and how little do we know of the hopes that instigated, or of the fears that prevailed ! We sometimes cannot avoid owning that we ourselves have committed a fault, but how we gloss it over—how we take temperament and temptation into account, till at length it appears to be a thing inevitable redeemed by the regret it has occasioned, and the lesson it has given. Not so do we reason for others—then we look to the isolated fact, not to the causes: the error shuts out the excuse. The truth is, we know nothing of each other excepting by the aid of philosophy and of poetry; philosophy, that analyzes our thoughts, and poetry that expresses our feelings.
  • Time is the great leveller, but he is also the sanctifier and the beautifier.
  • Communication is in itself civilization; we wear away our own prejudices only by contact with those of others. We are forced into making allowances, by seeing how much we need that they should be made for ourselves.
  • Now a nation's character is in its literature.
  • He was an enthusiast—enthusiasm is needed for action; calculation never acts—it is a passive principle.
  • Why, the very element of poetry is faith—faith in the beautiful, the divine, and the true.
  • No one can deny—no one would think of denying—the vast benefit which literature has conferred on mankind; and with what ingratitude has it ever been received!
  • Fame is but a beautiful classic delusion. The inspiration of the poet is like the inspiration of the Delphic oracles: what was once held divine is now confessed the promptings of an evil spirit mocking the votaries of whom it made victims. We firmly believe that the time is fast approaching when no more books will be written. The once writers: will say—“Why should we sacrifice our whole existence to obtain a vain praise, which, after all, never comes sufficiently home to us to be enjoyed? Why should we devote, to this most barren pursuit, industry and talent, which, in any other line, would be certain of that worldly success, which, as we live in the world, is the only success to be de sired?” Even poets must at last learn wisdom. The bitterness and the hollowness of praise will be perceived; and then who will be at the trouble of writing a book? Again we repeat, the time is fast approaching when no more books will be written.

First Love; or, Constancy in the Nineteenth Century (1836-3) Volume 48 page 326

  • The assertion that “What is everybody’s business is nobody’s,” is true enough; but the assertion that “What is nobody’s business is everybody’s,” is still truer. Now, a love affair, for example, is, of all others, a thing apart--an enchanted dream, where “common griefs and cares come not.” It is like a matrimonial quarrel--never to be benefited by the interference of others: it is a sweet and subtle language, “that none understand but the speakers;” and yet this fine and delicate spirit is most especially the object of public curiosity. It is often supposed before it exists: it is taken for granted, commented upon, continued and ended, without the consent of the parties themselves; though a casual observer might suppose that they were the most interested in the business.
  • I own that I have known greater misfortunes in life than that a young gentleman and lady of twenty should have to wait a twelve-month before they were married; but every person considers their own the worst that ever happened...
  • ... but a man has a natural antipathy to shopping, and even the attraction of a blush, and a blush especially of that attractive sort, one on your own account--even that was lost in the formidable array of ribands, silks, and bargains—
  • It is amazing how much our admiration takes its tone from the admiration of others; and when to that is added an obvious admiration of ourselves, the charm is irresistible.

Female Portrait Gallery - No. I. — Flora M'Ivor and Rose Bradwardine. (1837-1) Volume 52 page 35

  • Sir Walter Scott was the Luther of literature. He reformed and he regenerated. To say that he founded a new school is not saying the whole truth ; for there is something narrow in the idea of a school, and his influence has been universal. Indeed, there is no such thing as a school in literature ; each great writer is his own original, and "none but himself can be his parallel." We hear of the school of Dryden and of Pope, but where and what are their imitators ? Parnassus is the very reverse of Mont Blanc. There the summit is gained by treading closely in the steps of the guides ; but in the first, the height is only to be reached by a pathway of our own. The influence of a genius like Scott's is shown by the fresh and new spirit he pours into literature.
  • I own it gave my picturesque fancies at first a shock, to hear of a steam-boat on Loch Katrine ; but I was wrong. Nothing could be a more decisive proof of the increased communication between England and Scotland — and communication is the regal road to improvement of every kind.
  • But the dwellers in the country have little understanding of, and therefore little sympathy with, the longing for green fields which haunts the dweller in towns. The secret dream of almost every inhabitant in those dusky streets where even a fresh thought would scarcely seem to enter, is to realise an independence, and go and live in the country. Where is every holiday spent but in the country ! What do the smoky geraniums, so carefully tended in many a narrow street and blind alley attest, but the inherent love of the country ! To whom do the blooming and sheltered villas, which are a national feature in English landscape, belong, but to men who pass the greater part of their lives in small dim counting-houses ! This love of nature is divinely given to keep alive, even in the most toiling and world-worn existence, something of the imaginative and the apart. It is a positive good quality ; and one good quality has some direct, or indirect tendency to produce another.
  • There is no attachment stronger, more unselfish, than the love between brother and sister, thrown on the world orphans at an early age, with none to love them save each other. They feel how much they stand alone, and this draws them more together. Constant intercourse has given that perfect understanding which only familiarity can do ; hopes, interests, sorrows, are alike in common. Each is to either a source of pride ; it is the tenderness of love without its fears, and the confidence of marriage, without its graver and more anxious character. The fresh impulses of youth are all warm about the heart.
  • It is a fearful responsibility, the exercise of influence : let our own conduct bring its own consequences — we may well meet the worst; not so when we have led another to pursue any given line of action : if they suffer, how tenfold is that suffering visited on ourselves !

Female Portrait Gallery - No. II. — Constance. (1837-1) Volume 52 page 183

  • It is a curious thing, after years have elapsed, to go back upon the pages of a favourite author. Nothing shows us more forcibly the change that has taken place in ourselves. The book is a mental mirror — the mind starts from its own face, so much freshness, and so much fire has passed away. The colours and the light of youth have gone together. The judgment of the man rarely confirms that of the boy. What was once sweet has become mawkish, and the once exquisite simile appears little more than an ingenious conceit. The sentiment which the heart once beat to applaud has now no answering key-note within, and the real is perpetually militating against the imagined. It is a great triumph to the poet when we return to the volume, and find that our early creed was, after all, the true religion.
  • Not to have your house burned over your head for a twelvemonth seems an unwonted piece of domestic quiet.
  • Byron idealised and expressed that bitter spirit of discontent which has at the present moment taken a more material and tangible form. He is the incarnation of November. From time immemorial it has been an Englishman's privilege to grumble, and Byron gave picturesque language to the universal feeling.
  • It is the strangest problem of humanity — one too, for which the closest investigation can never quite account — to trace the progress by which innocence becomes guilt, and how those who formerly trembled to think of crime, are led on to commit that at which they once shuddered.
  • It is a cruel proof of the want of generosity in human nature, that an affection too utterly self-sacrificing always meets with an evil return.
  • But the passion of jealousy cannot exist without the passion of love, and is like its parent, creative, impetuous, and credulous.
  • The sweetest and best qualities of our nature may be turned to evil, by the strong force of circumstance and of temptation.

Female Portrait Gallery - No. III. — Alice Lee. (1837-1) Volume 52 page 480

  • By-the-by, this doctrine of perpetual transmigration would be a curious plea to urge for the non-fulfilment of former engagements ; seven years is I believe the term allotted for the entire change. Now, might not a man encumbered with debt plead at the expiration of the period in the Courts of Westminster, that he was not the person who actually contracted those debts ? Or might not an inconstant couple sue for a divorce, on the plea that neither were the individuals who originally married ?
  • The history of most fictions would be far stranger than the fictions themselves ; but it would be a dark and sad chronicle.
  • Literature soon becomes a power, not what it once was, a passion; but literary success, like all others, is only to be obtained, and retained, by labour — and labour and inclination do not always go together. Take all our most eminent writers, and the quantity of work, hard work, they have got through, will be found enormous and perpetual. Literature, as a profession, allows little leisure, and less indulgence.

Poetry

  • By turns the woman and the queen,
    And each as the other had never been.
  • Where had thy life been at this hour,
    Had not my Love been more than my Power ? —
    Away, if thou fearest, — love never must,
    Never can live with one shade of distrust.
    • (1825-2) Antony and Cleopatra. An Anecdote from Plutarch
  • Her face was all too bright for tears, she gave
    Sighs to the wind, and weeping to the wave,
    And left a lesson unto after-times,
    Too little dwelt upon in minstrel rhymes,
    A lesson how inconstancy should be
    Repaid again by like inconstancy.
    • (1825-2) Ideal Likenesses. Ariadne
  • Her heart and lip were music, albeit one
    Who marvell'd at what her sweet self had done;
    Who breathed for Love, and pined to find that Fame
    In answer to her lute's soft summons came;
    See, the eye droops in sadness, as to shun
    That which it dared not gaze on, Glory's sun.
    • (1825-2) Ideal Likenesses. Erinna
  • I stood between the meeting Years,
    The coming and the past,
    And I ask'd of the future one,
    Wilt thou be like the last?
    • (1826-1) Stanzas on the New Year
  • O no, my heart can never be
    Again in lighted hopes the same —
    The love that lingers there for thee
    Has more of ashes than of flame.
    • (1826-2) Ci-Devant
  • And when the reckless crowd among
    I speak of one sweet art,
    How lightly can I name the song,
    Which yet has wrung my heart !
    That lute and heart alike have chords
    Not to be spoken of in words —
    • (1826-2) The Wish
  • Hope is a timid thing,
    Fearful, and weak, and born in suffering;
    At least, such Hope as human life can bring.
  • If blasted hopes and ruin'd name,
    And all the venom Love lends Shame —
    The violent death, and rabble eye,
    To look upon its agony ;
    If these are not enough to win
    A pardon for Earth's deadliest sin,
    Words will not, cannot! — never dare
    Tell me it may be won by prayer !
    The coward prayer, the coward tear,
    Not from remorse wrung, but from fear!
  • Around his neck a ribbon clung,
    Close to his heart a picture hung :
    I saw the face — it was not mine ;
    I saw, too, a small dagger shine,
    A curious toy — you know the rest.
    • (1831-2) The Convict
  • Ah, the sweet present ! — should it not suffice ?
    Not to humanity, which vainly tries
    To lift the curtain that may never rise !
  • The Future is more present than the Past :
    For one look back, a thousand on we cast ;
    And hope doth ever memory outlast.
  • In the east the day was reddening,
    When the warriors pass'd ;
    In the west the night was deadening,
    As they looked their last ;
    As they looked their last on him —
    He, their comrade — their commander —
    He, the earth's adored —
    He, the godlike Alexander !
    Who can wield his sword ?
    As they went their eyes were dim,
    The silver-shielded warriors,
    The warriors of the world !
    • (1835-3) (Vol.45) Deathbed of Alexander the Great
  • Experience has rude lessons, and we grow
    Like what we have been taught too late to know,
    And yet we hate ourselves for being so.
    • (1836-1) (Vol.46) Experience
  • As steals the dew along the flower,
    So stole thy smile on me ;
    I cannot tell the day, nor hour
    I first loved thee !
    • (1836-2) (Vol.47) Songs-IV.
  • A word — a name —
    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.
    • (1836-2) (Vol.47) Subjects for Pictures
  • All the fairest things of earth,
    Art's creations have their birth —
    Still from love and death.
    • (1836-2) (Vol.47) Subjects for Pictures. II. The Banquet of Aspasia and Pericles
  • It was hidden in a wild wood
    Of the larch and pine ;
    It had been unto his childhood
    Solitude and shrine, —
    There he dream'd the hours away.
    • (1836-2) (Vol.47) Subjects for Pictures. III. Rienzi Showing Nina the Tomb of his Brother
  • Like a marble statue placed,
    Looking o'er the watery waste,
    With its white fixed gaze ;
    There the Goddess sits, her eye
    Raised to the unpitying sky ;
  • She is but the type of all,
    Mortal or celestial,
    Who allow the heart,
    In its passion and its power,
    On some dark and fated hour,
    To assert its part.
    • (1836-3) (Vol.48) Subjects for Pictures. Second Series. I. Calypso Watching the Ocean
  • Well he knows his course has hasted
    Through delicious sin,
    Borne tumultuously along.
    Never have the stars above
    Chronicled such utter love.
  • One sweet whisper from her came ;
    And he drank to catch her breath, —
    Wine and sigh alike are death !
    • (1836-3) (Vol.48) Subjects for Pictures. Second Series. II. A Supper of Madame de Brinvilliers
  • Once the buds of the pomegranate
    Paled beside her cheek's warm dye,
    Now 'tis like the last sad planet
    Waning in the morning sky —
    She has wept away its red.
    • (1836-3) (Vol.48) Subjects for Pictures. Second Series. III. The Moorish Maiden’s Vigil
  • Lone upon a mountain, the pine-trees wailing round him,
    Lone upon a mountain the Grecian youth is laid ;
    Sleep, mystic sleep, for many a year has bound him,
    Yet his beauty, like a statue's pale and fair, is undecay'd.
    When will he awaken ?
  • When every worldly thought is utterly forsaken,
    Comes the starry midnight, felt by life's gifted few;
    Then will the spirit from its earthly sleep awaken
    To a being more intense, more spiritual and true.
    So doth the soul awaken,
    Like that youth to night's fair queen !
    • (1837-1) (Vol. 49) Subjects for Pictures. Third Series. I. The Awakening of Endymion
  • They named him — ah ! yet
    Do I start at that name ;
    • (1837 1) (Vol. 49) A Name
  • Farewell, and when to-morrow
    Seems little, like to-day,
    And we find life's deepest sorrow
    Melts gradual away ;
    Yet do not quite forget me.
    • (1837 1) (Vol. 49) Songs - I.
  • 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
    • (1837 1) (Vol. 49) Three Extracts from the Diary of a Week.
  • We might have been !— these are but common words,
    And yet they make the sum of life's bewailing;
  • How much of the full heart must be
    A seal'd book at whose contents we tremble ?
    • (1837 1) (Vol. 49) We Might Have Been
  • 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.
    • (1837 1) (Vol. 49) Necessity
  • To dream and to create has been my fate,
    Alone, apart from life's more busy scheming ;
    I fear to think that I may find too late
    Vain was the toil, and idle was the dreaming.
    • (1837 1) (Vol. 49) Memory
  • Lonely by the moonlit waters
    Does the conqueror stand,
    Yet unredden'd by the slaughters
    Of his mighty band.
    Yet his laurel wants a leaf.
    There he stands, sad, silent, lonely ;
    For his hope is vain :
    He has reached that river only
    To return again.
  • Life is but the spirit's prison,
    Where its wings are furl'd,
    Stretching to their flight in vain, —
    Seeking that eternal home
    Which is in a world to come.
    • (1837 2) (Vol 50) Subjects for Pictures. Alexander on The Banks of the Hyphasis
  • Upon the sunny grass-plot stood the dial,
    Whose measured time strange contrast with ours made :
    Ah ! was it omen of life's after trial,
    That even then the hours were told in shade,
    In the old, old times,
    The dear old times ?
    • (1837 3) (Vol 51) The Old Times
  • We change, and others change, while recollection
    Fain would renew what it can but recall :
    Dark are life's dreams, and weary its affection,
    And cold its hopes, — and yet I felt them all,
    A long while ago.
    • (1838 1) (Vol 52) A Long While Ago
  • Ever sits the lady weeping —
    Weeping night and day —
    One perpetual vigil keeping,
    Till life pass away,
    And she join the seven who sleep.
  • Grief hath stern and silent powers,
    And her house is proud ;
    Not to-day's cold guarded hours
    Is despair allow'd ;
    But, shut out with haughty fears,
    Pride with daylight disappears,
    From the lovely Zegri Ladye —
    The Ladye weeping there.
    • (1838 2) (Vol 53) Subjects for Pictures - The Zegri Lady’s Vigil
  • Lonely — lonely on the shore —
    Where the mighty waters roar,
    Would that she could pass them o'er!
    Doth the maiden stand.
  • Like a human thought in quest
    Of a future hour.
    • (1838 2) (Vol 53) Subjects for Pictures - Ariadne Watching the Sea after the Departure of Theseus
  • Yes; for, while memory languidly is fetching
    Her treasures from the depths which they have lain among,
    A fragile hand — how thin — how weak — is sadly sketching
    Figures and fancies that cell's white walls along.
    On the lip there is a murmur —
    It is the swan's last song.
    • (1838 2) (Vol 53) Subjects for Pictures - The Death of Camoens

Other Gift Books

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The Forget-Me-Not, 1824 - The Indian Orphan

  • No one can say farewell with indifference.
  • The voyage appeared short, for I had nothing to anticipate.
  • There is truth and certainty in our first impressions. First impressions are natural monitors, and nature is a true guide.
  • It may seem fanciful, but to me the violet is the very emblem of woman's love; it springs up in secret; it hides its perfume even when gathered ; how timidly its deep blue leaves bend on their slight stem ! The resemblance may be carried yet further — woman's love is but beautiful in its purity ; let the hot breath of passion once sully it, and its beauty is departed — thus as the summer advances, the violet loses its fragrance ; June comes, but its odours are fled — the heart too has its June ; the flower may remain, but its fragrance is gone for ever.
  • Faintly coloured like a dream of bliss, a half formed rainbow hung on the departing storm, as fearful of yet giving promise of peace.
  • It is strange, though true, that the happiest part of our life is the shortest in detail. We dwell on the tempest that wrecked, the flood that overwhelmed — but we pass over in silence the numerous days we have spent in summer and sunshine.
  • They say women are more constant than men : it is the constancy of circumstance ; the enterprise, the exertion required of men continually force them out of themselves, and that which was at first necessity soon becomes habit — whereas the constant round of employments in which a woman is engaged requires no fatigue of mind or body; the needle is, generally speaking, both her occupation and amusement, and this kind of work leaves the ideas full play ; hence the imagination is left at liberty to dwell upon one subject, and hence habit, which is an advantage on the one side, becomes to her an additional rivet.
  • A letter then, breathing of home and affection, is a treasure ; it is like a memento from the dead, for absence is as death in all but that its resurrection is in this life.

The Forget-Me-Not, 1833 - Giulietta

  • But youth is as a flowing stream, on whose current the shadow may rest but not remain.

The Keepsake, 1833 - One Peep was Enough; or The Post-Office

  • ... what could have brought him to Dalton. There were no chalybeate-springs, warranted to cure every disease under the sun; no ruins in the neighbourhood, left expressly for antiquarians and pic-nic parties; no fine prospects, which, like music, people make it matter of conscience to admire; no celebrated person had ever been born or buried in its environs; there were no races, no assizes—in short, there was “no nothing."

The Keepsake, 1834 - The Head

    • Part 1
  • Time past on as lightly as he always steps over flowers, Brussels carpets, marble terraces, green turfs, or whatever simile may best express a path without an impediment.
  • There is nothing in nature so impracticable as the obstinacy of your true husband; it is the insurmountable obstacle—the Alps no female vinegar can melt.
  • But the knowledge of the library is not that of the world; a youth of solitude is bad preparation for a manhood of action; from the earliest age we need to mingle with our kind; the child corrects and instructs the child more than their masters; our equals are the tools wherewith experience works out its lessons; and the play-ground, with its rival interests, its injustices, its necessity for the ready wit and the curbed temper is both miniature and prophesy of the world, which will but bring back the old struggles only with a sterner aspect, and the same successes, but with more than half their enjoyment departed.
  • Youth suffers but for a season; the bowed but unbroken spirit resumes its elasticity; the future, unknown and beautiful, wins the present to itself, and the past waits for that dark and overwhelming influence which sooner or later will darken our whole horizon.
  • But the tyranny of custom, like all other tyrannies, when grown quite unbearable—for it is wonderful what people will endure-;had already sown the seeds of its own dissolution. Out of the hardship had grown the repining, and to repine at the exercise of an alleged right is soon to question its authority, and the first question asked shakes the whole ancient and time-honoured fabric of privilege.
  • Perfect equality, and perfect despotism, are theories equally unreducible to practice; but there are many fine sentiments belonging to the first, and there is singular fascination in a fine sentiment—we pay ourselves a compliment by uttering it.
  • There is one conviction at which, though forced upon us by daily experience, we never arrive, namely, the conviction that Nobody in reality cares for Anybody; but this truth is so cold that we fence it out by all sorts of cloaks and coverings, delusions and devices.
    • Part 2
  • The evil spirit of love left his soul for a moment, but returned, though with a strange and lurid aspect, bringing with him other and worse spirits than himself—hate, revenge, blood-thirstiness—all merged in and coloured by the excited and fanatic temper of the time.

The Cabinet of Modern Art, and Literary Souvenir, 1837 - Two Scenes in the Life of Anna Boleyn

  • The city and the crowd unidealise love; and love, in the young warm heart of a girl, should be a dream apart from all commoner emotions — as sweet and as ethereal as the blush with which it is born and dies. Beauty gives its own gracefulness to love — there must be romance blended with the passion inspired by the very lovely face which the mirror reflected.
  • Hope deferred is sickness to the heart — and she was now suffering that sickness, at its worst.

Heath's Book of Beauty, 1837 - A Scene in the Life of Nourmahal

  • The startled terror of remorse that dares not think of what it fears, is as inconsistent as all other human feelings.
  • Can loveliness lose its power ? Ah, yes ! when love can lose its truth. Weak and impetuous, yielding to temptation, but trembling to enjoy the reward of the committed crime ; such is the man of whom my heart made its divinity, — for whose sake I would have toiled as a slave; ay, and do ; but with far other aim now. Let us but once meet again, Jehanghire, and thou art mine ! but I — I can never be thine again. Life, throne, fortunes, we will yet share together ; but my heart, never, never more !
  • None but an ear, quickened as the mind can quicken the faculties of the body, could have heard a step that hesitated on the threshold.
  • I have won him, and shall keep him ; for to his weak temper habit will be as fetters of iron. I have won him — but how? He remembered not the earnest and devoted love of the young heart, which was his, and his only. Even my beauty failed to influence his selfish carelessness : but he is mine by a more potent spell. Love may be given in vain,— beauty may be powerless ; but I have mastered by the deeper magic of flattery.

Poetry

  • The world is as the sea, in whose salt waves,
    Like streams, we lose the freshness of our youth.
    • Friendship's Offering, 1825 (1824) The Suicide’s Grave
  • I dreamed a dream, that I had flung a chain
    Of roses around Love,—I woke, and found
    I had chained Sorrow.
    • The Literary Souvenir, 1826 (1825) The Forsaken
  • I wrote my name upon the sand;
    I thought I wrote it on thine heart.
    I had no touch of fear, that words,
    Such words, so graven, could depart.
    • Friendship's Offering, 1827 (1826) Song
  • The same, yet not the same — her face
    Has still that Grecian line ;
    The sculptured perfectness whose grace
    Has long been held divine.
    • The Amulet, 1831 (1830), The Legacy

Translations

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From the French

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Madame de Staël, Corinne (Isabel Hill, 1833):

  • Cradle of Letters ! Mistress of the World !
    Soil of the Sun ! Italia! I salute thee !
    How oft the human race have worn thy yoke.
    The vessels of thine arms, thine arts, thy sky !
  • Your Dante ! Homer of the Christian age,
    The sacred poet of Faith's mysteries—
    Hero of thought—whose gloomy genius plunged
    In Styx, and pierced to hell ; and whose deep soul
    Was like the abyss it fathomed.
  • That charm of genius, triumph of high art;
    Poetry's divination, which reveals
    All nature's secrets, such as influence
    The heart of man.
  • It is Rome's secret charm to reconcile
    Imagination with our long last sleep.
    We are resign'd ourselves, and suffer less
    For those we love. The people of the South
    Paint closing life in hues less terrible
    Than do the gloomy nations of the North :
    The sun, like glory, even warms the grave.
    • Chant of Corinne at the Capitol
  • Imagination's truth is from its power:
    Man's genius can create when nature's felt;
    He copies when he deems that he invents.
  • O Memory ! noble power ! thy reign is here.
    Strange destiny, how thus, from age to age,
    Doth man complain of that which he has lost.
    Still do departed years, each in their turn,
    Seem treasures of happiness gone by:
    And while mind, joyful in its far advance,
    Plunges amid the future, still the Soul
    Seems to regret some other ancient home
    To which it is drawn closer by the past.
  • O Earth ! all bathed with blood and tears, yet never
    Hast thou ceased putting forth thy fruit and flowers;
    And hast thou then no pity for mankind ?
    Can thy maternal breast receive again
    Their dust, and yet not throb ?
  • Mysterious enthusiasm, Love !
    The heart's supremest power;—which doth combine
    Within itself religion, poetry,
    And heroism.
  • Genius doth catch the music of the spheres,
    Which mortal ear was never meant to know.
    Genius can penetrate the mysteries
    Of feeling, all unknown to other hearts;
    A power hath entered in the inmost soul,
    Whose presence may not be contained.
  • What we may do
    To-morrow may perhaps decide our fate.
    We may have said but yesterday some word
    Which may not be recalled.
    • Corinne’s Chant in the Vicinity of Naples
  • Take ye my solemn farewell ! O, my friends,
    Already night is darkening on my eyes ;—
    But is not Heaven most beautiful by night ?
    Thousands of stars shine in the kindling sky,
    Which is an azure desert during day.
    Thus do the gathering of eternal shades
    Reveal innumerable thoughts, half lost
    In the full daylight of prosperity.
  • Religion has no limits, and no bounds;—
    The vast, the infinite, and the eternal.,
    Never from her may Genius separate.
    Imagination from its earliest flight,
    Past o'er the bounds of life : and the sublime
    Is the reflection of divinity.
  • If the wind murmurs then they seem to hear
    His voice ; and when night falls, the shadows round
    Seem the dark foldings of his sweeping robe.
    At noon, when life sees only the clear sky,
    Feels only the bright sun, the fated one
    Whom Death hath called, upon the distance marks
    The heavy shade so soon to shroud
    All nature from their eyes.
  • Merciful God, thou dost not answer me !
    I made my choice on earth, and now my heart
    Has no asylum. Ye decide for me,
    And such a destiny is best.
    • The Last Song of Corinne

Others:

  • Dear friend, if it be your's to have in some deep vale a home,
    Where you may dream of faith and fate, and all the great, to come.
    If such a place of tranquil rest be to your future given,
    Where every hour of solitude is consecrate to heaven,
    Oh, leave it not ! let this vain life fret its few hours afar,
    Where joy departs, and glory mocks the wide world's weary war
    Let not its rude and angry tide with jarring torrent wake
    The silence that the poplars love, of your own limpid lake.
  • Yes, solitude amid her depths has many a hidden balm
    Guarded for those who leave her not, to strengthen and to calm.
    • Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1835 (1834), 'Chapter House, Furness Abbey' translation from an epistle of St. Beuve to A. Fontenay. (Presumably Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve)
  • Sleep, little Paul, what, crying, hush ! the night is very dark ;
    The wolves are near the rampart, the dogs begin to bark ;
    The bell has rung for slumber, and the guardian angel weeps
    When a little child beside the hearth so late a play-time keeps.

From the German

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  • I know a lovely little flower, a flower for which I pine —
    I would go gather it, but bars my heavy hours confine;
    Oh, grief, when free, how easily that little flower was mine !
    . . .
    Oh, were I sinking to the grave I often ask in vain,
    And welcome Death stood by to loose the wasted captive's chain —
    Ah, name me the Forget-me-not, I'd wake to life again!
    • The London Literary Gazette (3rd January 1835) Versions from the German (First Series.) - 'The Lovely Little Flower' — Goethe.
  • What is the light from yon deep wood flashing —
    What the sound on the wild wind borne ?
    What the dark ranks that are onwards dashing
    To the voice of the pealing horn ?
    Who are they that thundering go ? —
    It is the Black Hunt of the bold Litzou !
    • The London Literary Gazette (3rd January 1835) Versions from the German (First Series.) - 'The Black Hunt of Litzou'
  • While we are laid on the battle plain,
    Drenched to the skin by the midnight rain,
    Pleasant dreams may thy slumber crown,
    As thou sinkest to rest amid silk and down :
    But shame beside thy pillow stand !
    A German maid shall kiss thee not,
    A German song rejoice thee not,
    And German wine shall warm thee not !
    He who has strength to wield a brand,
    Let him draw it now for his father-land !
    • The London Literary Gazette (3rd January 1835) Versions from the German (First Series.) - 'The Gathering' — Koerner.
  • Sweet Pauline, could I buy thee
    With gold or its worth,
    I would not deny thee
    The wealth of the earth.
    They talk of the pleasure
    That riches bestow —
    Without thee, my treasure,
    What joy could I know ?
    • The London Literary Gazette (10th January 1835) Versions from the German (Second Series.) 'Pauline's Price'— Goethe.
  • In a valley sweet with singing
    From the hill and from the wood,
    Where the green moss rills were springing,
    A wondrous maiden stood.
    The first lark seemed to carry
    Her coming through the air ;
    Not long she wont to tarry,
    Though she wandered none knew where.
    • The London Literary Gazette (10th January 1835) Versions from the German (Second Series.) 'The Coming of Spring'—Schiller.
  • The woman raised her languid head,
    And said, "My child was weak
    He knew no one amid the dead
    His daily food to seek !
    My husband was a hunter good
    As ever arrows bore :
    I know my child will now have food,
    Therefore I weep no more.
    I sit and think upon the past,
    And sing my mournful strain :
    I know that we shall meet at last,
    And never part again."
    • The London Literary Gazette (24th January 1835) Versions from the German (Fourth Series.) 'The Huron's Child'— Herder.
  • Strength, power, and majesty, belong to man ;
    They make the glory native to his life ;
    But sweetness is a woman's attribute —
    By that she has reigned, and by that will reign.
    • The London Literary Gazette (24th January 1835) Versions from the German (Fourth Series.) 'The Empire of Woman' — Schiller.

Count Egmont, a Tragedy. — Goethe. Versions from the German (Fifth Series.)

  • Scene I. — (Clara, Mother, Brackenberg) [Act 1, Scene 3]
  • Mother:
    Children and sorrow come together. First
    Are sleepless nights, and cradle watchings — next
    Your age is vexed with maiden fantasies,
    And your girl's lover costeth you more care
    Than ever did your own. It is not well !
    • The London Literary Gazette (7th February 1835)
  • Scene II. — (Mother, Clara, and afterwards Count Egmont.) [Act 3, Scene 2]
  • Clara:
    The loving heart delighteth in old songs ;
    They say so many things we wish to say,
    And wake our sympathies, and make us feel
    Less strange ourselves. Others have loved as well,
    And left these tender relics of their love.
  • Egmont:
    Love is not
    A bird of prey, to pay the hunter's toil —
    He is best won by those who seek him not.
  • Egmont:
    The Egmont of yon city — he is proud,
    And cold, and stern, and sorrowful. He keeps
    His counsel to himself. He wears a brow
    That is a smiling shadow to his heart :
    Perplexed with seeming mirth, that shroudeth care.
    Exalted by a giddy populace,
    That know not what they laud, or what they seek.
    Moving 'mid those who understand him not ;
    Whom he has naught in common with : and worn
    By furious guarding 'gainst familiar friends
    Who seem, yet are not. Watched, suspected, feared ;
    Wearied with labour, which hath neither end
    Nor yet reward ; but only distant hope.
    Such is the Egmont of the field and state.
    But thine beloved : he is happy, frank,
    Open, and known to that most dear of hearts —
    Which he knows, too, and trusts it as his own.
    Calm, deeply joyful ; such is Egmont now.
    • The London Literary Gazette (28th February 1835)
  • Egmont, followed by Clara, Brackenberg, and Citizens. [Act 5, Scene 1]
  • Clara:
    I will speak softly, till our gathered strength
    Finds in its union voice. Ah, no delay !
    The tyranny that dared to fetter wears
    A midnight dagger.
  • Clara:
    Neighbours, dear friends, ye dream, ye dream : awake!
    Gaze not on me with sadly wondering eyes,
    I only bid you to your actual wish.
    My voice is but the voice of your own hearts.
    • The London Literary Gazette (7th March 1835)
  • Count Egmont's Soliloquy In Prison. [Act 5, Scene 2]
  • Old friend and true companion ! soothing Sleep,
    Yes fly, like other friends. How easily
    Did your sweet influence fall on my free head,
    Cool like a lovely crown of myrtle boughs.
    Beloved Sleep ! amid the clash of arms,
    On the rough torrent of unquiet life,
    I rested, breathing lightly as a child,
    Weary and cradled in your mother arms.
    When the storm swept the leaves from off the bough,
    And rushed thro' crashing branches, yet my heart
    Was in its depths untroubled, — and I slept.
  • It is not him, not the bold enemy
    That rushes fiercely on the healthful breast.
    For such I have no fear. ’Tis this dull jail
    That makes the hero and the coward one !
  • Courage is like an angel at my heart !
  • The fair face painted on the dungeon air,
    By the strong force of hope, distinct and sweet,
    Is a good omen. Love mine, I will rest.
    If my last sleep — it will be full of thee.
    • The London Literary Gazette (28th March 1835)

Other Publications

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Literary Remains

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The Female Portrait Gallery

  • "Waverley" was the avater (sic) of a new era ;
    • No. 1. Waverley — FLORA MAC IVOR.
  • (of names) Literary godfathers and godmothers, like those in real life, have much to answer for, on the score of the inappropriate.
  • No one makes the heart of a little home circle entirely their own, without some very sweet gifts of nature — we must love to be beloved.
    • No. 2. Waverley — ROSE BRADWARDINE.
  • How many are there who live eleven months on the hope of the twelfth given to some brief but delightful wandering.
  • The habits of a man accustomed to command — especially on a foreign station, would necessarily be reserved and secluded. Not only accustomed to implicit obedience, but aware of its imperative necessity under the circumstances in which they have been placed, such are apt to expect it from all. Now, what is but the necessary authority in official life, and with man over man, seems harshness when extended to woman.
  • Deception is always an evil, but in youth — youth, whose very faults should be open-hearted and impetuous, it lays the foundation of the worst possible faults of character.
    • No. 3. Guy Mannering — JULIA MANNERING.
  • When civilization comes to a certain point, the changes in the higher classes are little more than those of fancies and of fashions ; but those operating on the classes below are changes of character.
    • No.4. Guy Mannering — LUCY BERTRAM.
  • The history of credulity would be the most singular page in the great history of mankind. From those vast beliefs which have founded religions and empires, down to the inventions that garnish the last new murder, there has always been a tendency in the human mind to believe with as little expense of the reasoning faculty as possible.
  • It is a curious fact, that the true has always been more opposed at the outset than the false ; the circulation of the blood and vaccination nearly lost their discoverers credit and practice, while some vender of quack medicines makes a rapid fortune. This may perhaps be accounted for, simply, that the impostor addresses the multitude, while the scientific discoverer appeals to his brethren in knowledge, all of whom are inclined to deny, what, if admitted, must show, that a great part of their own research and acquirement has been in vain ; still he who trades on human credulity will have a good stock on hand, especially when the lure held forth is that of gain.
  • As a story teller, Scott is unrivalled ; he would have made the fortune of a cafe at Damascus.
  • How deep must be the feeling of the bereaved parent who cannot look on the fair face of his child without recalling a face, once the fairest and the dearest in the world: the shadow of the grave hangs around the infant playfulness of the orphan, and even the hopes of the present must come tinged with something of sadness from the past.
  • Difficulty is as needful to appreciation as labour is to existence.
    • No.5. The Antiquary— MISS WARDOUR.
  • The history of credulity would be the most singular page in the great history of mankind. From those vast beliefs which have founded religions and empires, down to the inventions that garnish the last new murder, there has always been a tendency in the human mind to believe with as little expense of the reasoning faculty as possible.
  • ... but the waters of life are for ever flowing onwards, and little trace do they bear of what clouds have darkened or reddened the waves below as they floated by.
    • No.6. The Antiquary.— MARY MAC INTYRE.
  • Many and opposite are the lots in life, and unequal are the portions which they measure out to the children of earth. We cannot agree with those who contend that the difference after all is but in outward seeming. Such an assertion is often the result of thoughtlessness — sometimes the result of selfishness. It is one of the good points of human nature, that it revolts against human suffering. Few there are who can witness pain, whether of mind or of body, without pity, and the desire to alleviate ; but such is our infirmity of purpose, that a little suffices to turn us aside from assistance. Indolence, difficulties, and contrary interests come in the way of sympathy, and then we desire to excuse our apathy to ourselves. It is a comfortable doctrine to suppose that the evil is made up by some mysterious allotment of good ; it is an excuse for non-interference, and we let conscience sleep over our own enjoyments, taking it for granted others have them also — though how we know not.
  • It must, however, be admitted, that the hard circumstances form the strong character, as the cold climes of the north nurture a race of men, whose activity and energies leave those of the south far behind. Hence it is that the characters of women are more uniform than men ; they are rarely placed in circumstances to call forth the latent powers of the mind.
  • No man ever enters into the feelings of a woman, let his kindness be what it may; they are too subtle and too delicate for a hand whose grasp is on "life's rougher things." They require that sorrow should find a voice ; now the most soothing sympathy is that which guesses the suffering without a question.
    • No.7. Rob Roy — DIANA VERNON.
  • After all, though beauty be deceitful, and favour be vain, yet beauty is the most exquisite gift ever lavished by fairies around an infant cradle. Its charm is nameless ; it wins us, we know not why — and lingers on our memory, we know not wherefore. Whether in the animate or the inanimate world, it is the cause of our most delicious sensations ; it belongs to the imagination, for it calls up within us whatever of poetry may be lurking in the "hidden mines of thought." It is the attribute of all that is most glorious in existence — it is on the azure sky — it clothes the earth as with a garment — it rides triumphant over the purple bosom of the sea. Look within our hearts, it has originated all that is ideal in our nature. Beauty is the shadow flung from heaven on earth — it is the type of a lovelier and more spiritual existence, and the broken and transitory lights that it flings on this our sad and heavy pilgrimage, do but indicate another and a better sphere, where the beautiful will also be the everlasting. The homage involuntarily paid to its mysterious influence is but an unconscious acknowledgment of its divine origin, and its eternal future.
    • No.8. The Black Dwarf — ISABEL VERE.
  • The favourite volume whose reading we commend, is inevitably connected with ourselves — it must bring to our image those lonely hours when the recurrence of an image has such influence — it invests that image with the associations of poetry and fiction, and thus redeems it from the common-place of ordinary life. There is also the sympathy of taste — and how much may be inferred from a passage pencilled originally for no other eyes but our own. Then, too, a book is the prettiest stepping stone to a correspondence ; it seems such a simple thing to write a note of thanks, and so natural to add some slight remark on the author ; and how often is the criticism of an author's sentiments but the expression of our own !
  • I have all my life been an indweller of the town, and I frankly confess, for a constant residence, I like it better than all the pastoral charms that ever made the morality of an essay, or gave grace to poetry ; still there is that about the country to which the heart always turns with a feeling of freshness and renovation. The moonlight walk through the green wood, would come back upon the memory with a spell which would not belong to a lamp-lighted ramble. The green-leaf would give its freshness, the wild-flower its sweetness ; on the ear would arise the murmur of the wind in the boughs — or the song of the brook singing like a child for very gladness.
  • It is a fact, that though a Scotchman be the most locomotive of individuals — there is scarcely a habitable part of the globe where he is not to be found — yet nothing ever weakens his attachment to his country.
    • No.9. Old Mortality — EDITH BELLENDEN.
  • The advantages of general independence are too obvious for dispute ; but it may be regretted that the rich and poor now-a-days live so far apart : they have no amusements in common, and it is the cheerful hours of life past together that most knit the social ties. The hunt in his forest, and the Christmas by his hearth, drew the baron and his people together, each in their most lightsome mood — the gain was mutual.
  • Partly from being a more scattered population, which leads to self-dependence — partly to their religious struggles having given an historical character to their ordinary remembrances, nourished by that family pride which loves to look back — there is more individuality among the Scotch than among any other peasantry.
    • No.10. Old Mortality — JENNY DENNISON.
  • We all know that there is evil in the world — we read of it — we hear of it — but we never think of its entering our own charmed circle. Look round our circle of acquaintance; how it would startle us to be asked to name one whom we thought capable of crime; how much more so to find that crime had been committed by one near and dear to our inmost heart. What a moral revulsion would such a discovery produce — how weak we should find ourselves under such a trial — how soon we should begin to disconnect the offender and the offence ; then, for the first time, we should begin to understand the full force of temptation, and to allow for its fearful strength ; and should we not begin to excuse what had never before seemed capable of palliation?
    • No.11. The Heart of Mid Lothian — JEANNIE DEANS.
  • We differ widely from each other ; do we not, as circumstances change around us, moulding us like slaves to their will — do we not differ yet more from ourselves ?
  • I do not agree with Goethe, who says that every man has that hidden in the secret recesses of his bosom, which, if known, would cause his fellow men to turn from him with hatred ; on the contrary, I firmly believe that were the workings of the heart known, they would rather win for us favour and affection.
  • I can conceive no punishment so dreadful as keeping perpetual watch on our words, lest they betray what they mean to conceal ; to know no unguarded moment — no careless gaiety — to pine for the confidence which yet we dare not bestow — to tremble, lest that some hidden meaning lurk in a phrase which only our own sickly fancy could torture into bearing such — to have suspicion become a second nature — and to shrink every morning from the glad sunshine, for we know not what a day may bring forth : the wheel of Ixion were a tender mercy compared to such a state.
    • No.12. The Heart of Mid Lothian — EFFIE DEANS.
  • What is the world that lies around our own ? Shadowy, unsubstantial, and wonderful are the viewless elements, peopled with spirits powerful and viewless as the air which is their home. From the earth's earliest hour, the belief in the supernatural has been universal. At first the faith was full of poetry ; for, in those days, the imagination walked the earth even as did the angels, shedding their glory around the children of men. The Chaldeans watched from their lofty towers the silent beauty of night — they saw the stars go forth on their appointed way, and deemed that they bore with them the mighty records of eternity. Each separate planet shone on some mortal birth, and as its aspect was for good or for evil, such was the aspect of the fortunes that began beneath its light. Those giant watch-towers, with their grey sages, asked of the midnight its mystery, and held its starry roll to be the chronicle of this breathing world. Time past on, angels visited the earth no more, and the divine beliefs of young imagination grew earthlier. Yet poetry lingered in the mournful murmur of the oaks of Dodona, and in the fierce war song of the flying vultures, of whom the Romans demanded tidings of conquest. But prophecy gradually sank into divination, and it is a singular proof of the extent both of human credulity and of curiosity, to note the various methods that have had the credit of forestalling the future. From the stars to a tea-cup is a fall indeed —
  • I believe that the grand secret of attraction is, that the details always turn on what is present to our fears, or gratifying to our vanity.
    • No.13. The Legend of Montrose — ANNOT LYLE.
  • If you give an opinion in favour of one, you still offend both ; for it is a physological quality in quarrels conjugal, that though each considers the other to blame, they will not allow you to think so too ; moreover, the chances are, that, in your own private opinion, they are both wrong — a most unpopular verdict to pronounce.
  • Few are the beliefs, still fewer the superstitions of to-day. We pretend to account for everything, till we do not believe enough for that humility so essential to moral discipline. But the dark creed of the fatalist still holds its ground — there is that within us, which dares not deny what, in the still depths of the soul, we feel to have a mysterious predominance. To a certain degree we controul our own actions — we have the choice of right or wrong ; but the consequences, the fearful consequences, lie not with us. Let any one look upon the most important epochs of his life ; how little have they been of his own making — how one slight thing has led on to another, till the result has been the very reverse of our calculations. Our emotions, how little are they under our own controul ! how often has the blanched lip, or the flushed cheek, betrayed what the will was strong to conceal ! Of all our sensations, love is the one which has most the stamp of Fate. What a mere chance usually leads to our meeting the person destined to alter the whole current of our life. What a mystery even to ourselves the influence which they exercise over us. Why should we feel so differently towards them, to what we ever felt before ? An attachment is an epoch in existence — it leads to casting off old ties, that, till then, had seemed our dearest ; it begins new duties ; often, in a woman especially, changes the whole character ; and yet, whether in its beginning, its continuance or its end, love is as little within our power as the wind that passes, of which no man knows whither it goeth or whence it comes.
    • No.14. The Bride of Lammermuir — LUCY ASHTON.
  • Fiction is but moulding together the materials collected by every day, in real as well as imagined life ; the highest order of excellence carries the impulse along with it. Nature and fortune have this earth for their place of contention, and the victory is too often with the latter.
  • The timid temper lives in perpetual terror, the nobler one braces itself to endure when ever the appointed time shall come.
  • I believe that more women are disappointed in marriage than men ; a woman gives the whole of her heart — the man only gives the remains of his, and very often there is only a little left. Besides his idol is rarely so much the work of his own hands as her's ; at the end of the first year she may ask, where are the picturesque and ennobling qualities with which she invested her lover? in nine cases out of ten echo will indeed answer “where."
    • No.15. Ivanhoe — REBECCA.
  • How different too would the real character be from that which is assumed ; how little often do the most intimate know of each other. But the difference that the stranger might discover is nothing to that which we trace in ourselves.
    • No.16. Ivanhoe — ROWENA.
  • No book is fairly judged till it is read twice, and at distant periods. It is curious to note the variation of taste in ourselves. I can remember I devoured the story keenly, dwelt on all that partook of sentiment, and never questioned the depth of any remark. I now find that I take chief interest in what brings out character. I enter more into the humourous, and am every now and then tempted to analyse the truth of a deduction. I think more over what I am reading, and delight more in connecting the world of fiction with that of reality.
    • No.17. The Monastery — MARY AVENEL.
  • The Scotch are too cautious to be witty — they take thought beforehand of their answers ; they are not people of impulse, and wit is an impulse. "It springs spontaneous if it spring." But then they have humour, rich, racy, sly humour, full of national character, and nearly allied to pathos.
  • What a strange page in human history is that of social distinction ; no people so savage but they have a sort of fashion. Even among the wild people in whose country I am now writing, there are all the small distinctions of small gentility — for example, it is not "comme il faut to wear silk."
    • No.18. The Monastery — MYSIE HAPPER.
  • In the very lowest class it is well to be bred up amid those scenes wherein our future is cast ; nothing ever supplies the place of those early associations — nothing ever knits the heart to the place of its birth like the remembrances of childhood — nothing can give the entire knowledge of a people, but having been brought up among them.
    • No.19. The Abbot — MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS.
  • It is not in the calm and measured paths of to day that we see the more bold and pronounced characters, whose outlines have been rough-hewn by the strong hand of necessity ; yet to such troubled times often belong the development of our noblest and best qualities — the stormy gulf of Ormus throws up the finest pearls. It is not in the season of tranquility that we know aught of the generous devotion, the fertility of resource, and the forgetfulness of self often shown in the hour of trial. When the French revolution broke out, how many, only accustomed to indolence, luxury, and custom, showed that "there was iron in the rose ;" and, whether at the call of duty or of affection, were prepared to bear even to the uttermost, and to exert a fortitude till then undreamed of.
  • Youth is frank, eager, and prone to believe in the good ; it looks round, and it sees flowers ; it looks up and sees stars ; evil appears impossible, because it does not seem to be in ourselves. It remains for after and weary years to teach us, that even the young and the innocent may be led into crime by the strong influence of temptation. Passion first, and interest afterwards, lures the feet of men into dark and crooked paths, which none in earlier and holier hours deemed they could tread. We may have been often deceived, but it is not until we ourselves begin to deceive that we dread deceit.
  • A gay temper is like a bright day ; true, it may have its faults — a little petulance, a little wilfulness — the flush may be too ready in the cheek, and the flash too prompt in the eye ; still these are only trifles to be pardoned, and we like that all the better in which we have something to forgive.
    • No.20. The Abbot — CATHERINE SEYTON.
  • The history of most fictions would be far stranger than the fictions themselves ; but it would be a dark and sad chronicle. Half the works that constitute the charm of our leisure, that give their own interest to the long November evening, or add to the charm of a summer noon beneath the greenwood tree, are the offspring of poverty and of pain. ... How often is the writer obliged to put his own trouble, his suffering, or his sorrow aside, to finish the task ! The hand may tremble, the eyes fill with unbidden tears, and the temples throb with feverish pain, yet how often is there some hard and harsh necessity, which says, "the work must be done.”
  • I do not believe that affection can exist with truth, without the ideal, and without blending with itself all that is best and most earnest in our nature.
    • No.21. Woodstock — ALICE LEE.
    • No.22. Marmion — CONSTANCE. See under The Monthly Magazine

Castruccio Castrucani
Act I - Scene 1:

  • [From Cesario]

But strong in your good cause.
Oh, ye are strong, If ye would know your strength !

Act I - Scene 2:

  • [From Castruccio]

Thanks, gentlemen,
For an indifferent lodging. I have learnt
That prisons, tenanted with thoughts of death,
Is not a punishment to order lightly;
Therefore, ye shall not fill my vacant place.

  • [From Castruccio]

Not so, my lord ; there was a higher cause —
The right against the wrong. Your army came,
A mercenary and a selfish band,
Some urged by false ambition, some for spoil.
No noble motive noble impulse gave :
Ye were aggressors, and ye fought like such.

Act II - Scene 1

  • [From Arrezi]

I do not know the times in which I live.
So much of change lies heavy on each hour !

Act II - Scene 2

  • [From Castuccio]

Crime takes no shape so base as treachery,
And yonder slave betrays his city's council
For a few ducats ; but the time will come,
When, strong in Lucca's cause, I shall not need
Such an unworthy means ; the slave and spy
Belong to tyranny, and freedom works
With nobler instruments.

Quotes about Landon

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  • I know not who, or what thou art;
    Nor do I seek to know thee,
    While Thou, performing thus thy part,
    Such banquets canst bestow me.
    Then be, as long as thou shalt list,
    My viewless, nameless Melodist.
  • Within thy passion-haunted pages
    Throng forward girls and distant ages,
    The lifeless learns at once to live,
    The dumb grows strangely talkative,
    Resemblances begin to strike
    In things exceedingly unlike,
    All nouns, like statesmen, suit all places,
    And verbs, turned lawyers, hunt for cases.
    • Winthrop Mackworth Praed (d. 1839), 'A Preface'
  • Of the gifted being whose career, intimately blended for nearly twenty years with my own in every intellectual and literary pursuit, it is my inevitable task to describe, I cannot write in a language addressed to common minds or submitted to mere worldly rules. I must appeal to the feeling and the imaginative; for such was L. E. L. She cannot be understood by an ordinary estimate nor measured by an ordinary standard; and those who have not poetry in their souls and warm and deep sympathies in their natures, will find little to interest them in this portion of my work.
    ....
    I found in L. E. L. a creature of another sphere, though with every fascination which could render her most loveable in our every-day world. The exquisite simplicity of childhood, the fine form of womanhood, the sweetest of dispositions, the utmost charm of unaffected manners, and, above all, an impassioned ideal and poetical temperament which absorbed her existence and held all else comparatively as nothing. The development of this Psyche-phenomenon was her life, and all that pertained to it. Her whole history realised the allegory, if it be an allegory, of Apuleius, as closely as if it had been invented to shape her course, with the exception of its fatal termination on earth—death instead of slumber;
    • William Jerdan, Autobiography (1852)
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