Letitia Elizabeth Landon Quotes

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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.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Oh! what is memory but a gift
Within a ruin'd temple left,
Recalling what its beauties were,
And then presenting what they are.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
There are always an ample sufficiency of compassionate neighbours ready to console one who, by common consent, is styled "the disconsolate widower.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Ah! there are memories that will not vanish;
Thoughts of the past we have no power to banish.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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 ;

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
And the hall is lone, and the hall is drear,
For the smiling of woman shineth not here.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
'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.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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?

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
The early graced of Grecian song,
The fragrant myrtle tree;
For it doth speak of happy love,
The delicate, the true.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
The sunshine of the morning
Is abroad upon the hills,
With the singing of the green-wood leaves,
And of a thousand rills.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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 !—

Letitia Elizabeth Landon