Letitia Elizabeth Landon poems
Letitia Elizabeth Landon(1802-1838 / England)
Revenge
- by Letitia Elizabeth Landon 44
Ay, gaze upon her rose-wreathed hair,And gaze upon her smile;
Seem as you drank the very air
Her breath perfumed the while:
And wake for her the gifted line,
That wild and witching lay,
And swear your heart is as a shrine,
That only owns her sway.
'Tis well: I am revenged at last,—
Mark you that scornful cheek,—
The eye averted as you pass'd,
Spoke more than words could speak.
Ay, now by all the bitter tears
That I have shed for thee,—
The racking doubts, the burning fears,—
Avenged they well may be—
By the nights pass'd in sleepless care,
The days of endless woe;
All that you taught my heart to bear,
All that yourself will know.
I would not wish to see you laid
Within an early tomb;
I should forget how you betray'd,
And only weep your doom:
But this is fitting punishment,
To live and love in vain,—
Oh my wrung heart, be thou content,
And feed upon his pain.
Go thou and watch her lightest sigh,—
Thine own it will not be;
And bask beneath her sunny eye,—
It will not turn on thee.
'Tis well: the rack, the chain, the wheel,
Far better hadst thou proved;
Ev'n I could almost pity feel,
For thou art nor beloved.
Fountain's Abbey
- by Letitia Elizabeth Landon 40
NEVER more, when the day is o'er,Will the lonely vespers sound;
No bells are ringing—no monks are singing,
When the moonlight falls around.
A few pale flowers, which in other hours
May have cheered the dreary mood;
When the votary turned to the world he had spurned,
And repined at the solitude.
Still do they blow 'mid the ruins below,
For fallen are fane and shrine,
And the moss has grown o'er the sculptured stone
Of an altar no more divine.
Still on the walls where the sunshine falls,
The ancient fruit-tree grows;
And o'er tablet and tomb, extends the bloom
Of many a wilding rose.
Fair though they be, yet they seemed to me
To mock the wreck below;
For mighty the tower, where the fragile flower
May now as in triumph blow.
Oh, foolish the thought, that my fancy brought;
More true and more wise to say,
That still thus doth spring, some gentle thing,
With its beauty to cheer decay.