Letitia Elizabeth Landon Quotes

When will my soul forget the look
With which one single stem she took
From out the wreath ?—a tulip flower;
But, touch'd as by some withering power,
The painted leaves were drooping round
The rich but burning heart they bound.

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!

English people ... never speak, excepting in cases of fire or murder, unless they are introduced.

By turns the woman and the queen,
And each as the other had never been.

Love has no power to look forward — the delicious consciousness of the present, a faint but delightful shadow of the past, form its eternity.

Alas! for him whose youthful fire
Is vowed and wasted on the lyre,—
Alas! for him who shall essay,
The laurel's long and dreary way!
Mocking will greet, neglect will chill
His spirit's gush, his bosom's thrill;
And, worst of all, that heartless praise
Echoed from what another says.

It must be worth a life of toil and care,—
Worth those dark chains the wearied one must bear
Who toils up fortune's steep,—all that can wring
The worn-out bosom with lone-suffering,—
Worth restlessness, oppression, goading fears,
And long-deferred hopes of many years,—
To reach again that little quiet spot,
So well loved once, and never quite forgot;—
To trace again the steps of infancy,
And catch their freshness from their memory!

Black (for such the quarries yield
Where the sun hath never shone,
Which night only rests upon,
Was the marble floor, which gave
Mirror like some clear dark wave.

Who has not loathed that worst, that waking hour,
When grief and consciousness assert their power;
When misery has morn's freshness, yet we fain
Would hold it as a dream, and sleep again;

Hope is a timid thing,
Fearful, and weak, and born in suffering;
At least, such Hope as human life can bring.

Does the sweet morning rise,
Bride-like, from sleep,
When their first revelries
Bird and bee keep,
Singing out joyously
In the green tree ?
Then, when my hopes are high,
Think I of thee.

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.

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.

I've thought upon thy brow when Night
Threw o'er my pallet her summer moonlight,
And I have looked on the midnight sky
To catch the depth and light of thy eye ;
I painted from these and from memory,
For I could not paint when I looked on thee.

Midnight is a wonderful thing in a vast city—and midnight was upon Vienna. The shops were closed, the windows darkened, and the streets deserted—strange that where so much of life was gathered together there could be such deep repose; yet nothing equals the stillness of a great town at night. Perhaps it is the contrast afforded by memory that makes this appear yet more profound. In the lone valley, and in the green forest, there is quiet even at noon—quiet, at least, broken by sounds belonging alike to day and night. The singing of the bee and the bird, or the voice of the herdsman carolling some old song of the hills—these may be hushed; but there is still the rustle of the leaves, the wind murmuring in the long grass, and the low perpetual whisper of the pine. But in the town—the brick and mortar have no voices of their own. Nature is silent—her soft, sweet harmonies are hushed in the great human tumult—man, and man only, is heard. Through many hours of the twenty-four, the ocean of existence rolls on with a sound like thunder—a thousand voices speak at once. The wheels pass and re-pass over the stones—music, laughter, anger, the words of courtesy and of business, mingle together—the history of a day is the history of all time. The annals of life but repeat themselves.