Letitia Elizabeth Landon Quotes

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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 !

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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!

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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,—

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
The field is fought—who walketh there?—
The shadow victory casts—Despair!

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Oh ! never should a woman's words be more
Than sighs which have found utterance.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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, —

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Let music make less terrible
The silence of the dead;
I care not, so my spirit last
Long after life has fled.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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 !

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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?

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
But these days
Of visible poetry have long been past!—
No fear that the young hunter may profane
The haunt of some immortal;

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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 ;

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Knowledge is much like dust — it sticks to one, one does not know how.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Happiness ! pleasure I should rather say,
Happiness never made on earth a stay —

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Never, dear father, love can be,
Like the dear love I had for thee!

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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 : …

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
How many glorious structures we had raised
Upon Hope's sandy basis!

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Strange mystery of our nature, that those in whom genius develops itself in imagination, thus taking its most ethereal form, should yet be the most dependent on the opinions of others!

Letitia Elizabeth Landon