Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Letitia Elizabeth Landon was an English poet and novelist, better known by her initials L.E.L. Her first major breakthrough came with The Improvisatrice and she developed the metrical romance towards the Victorian ideal of the Victorian monologue, influencing fellow English writers such as Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, Alfred Tennyson and Christina Rossetti. Her influence can also b
"—musics power Is little felt in sunlit hour; But hear its voice when hopes depart, Like swallows, flying from the heart On which the summers late decline Has set a sadness and a sign;. . . . . . How deeply will the spirit feel The lute, the songs sweet-voiced appeal; And how the heart drink in their sighs As echoes they from Paradise."
"Alas! that every lovely thing Lives only but for withering,— That spring rainbows and summer shine End but in autumns pale decline."
"It was no fancy, he had named the name Of love, and at that thought her cheek grew flame:"
"The bright cloud shone on the rivers face, But the death-black waters had not a trace Of the crimson blaze that over them playd : It seemd as if a curse were laid On the grass, on the river, the tree, and the flower, And shut them out from the sunbeams power ;"
"True love is timid, as it knew its worth, And that such happiness is scarce for earth."
"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 glorys coronal, And one smile of beauty is worth them all.—"
