Letitia Elizabeth Landon - Bright Quotes

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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
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!

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
She was so changed, the soft carnation cloud
Once mantling o'er her cheek…
Had faded into paleness, broken by
Bright burning blushes, torches of the tomb.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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.

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
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
But wit cuts its bright way through the glass-door of public favour;

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Who seeing the fair ship
That swept through the bright waves.
Would dream that tyrants trod her deck,
And that her freight was slaves !

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
The bride was young and beautiful, the bridegroom stern and old,—
But the silken rein was hung with pearls, the housings bright with gold.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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!

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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 ;

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
[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 !

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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 ?

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
'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;

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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!

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Love, thou hast hopes like summers, short and bright,
Moments of ecstasy, and maddening dreams,
Intense delicious throbs!

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon