Letitia Elizabeth Landon - Heart Quotes

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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?

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Thrice hallowed shrine
Of the heart's intercourse, our own fireside!

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
'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,—

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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?

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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 ?

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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?

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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!

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Alas! alas! how plague-spot like will sin
Spread over the wrung heart it enters in!

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Words are powerless to tell. —
Such the image in my heart, —
Painter, try thy glorious art !

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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?

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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!

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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?

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
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.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
[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 !

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
That charm of genius, triumph of high art;
Poetry's divination, which reveals
All nature's secrets, such as influence
The heart of man.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
How often will the lip frame some indifferent question, when the heart is full of the most important!

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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 !

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon