Letitia Elizabeth Landon: Trending quotes (page 9)

“Alas! alas! too often conscience sleeps,
When pleasure's syren numbers lull its rest.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Canto II, VIII
The Fate of Adelaide (1821)

Pleasure , Sleep

“The Lake was that deep blue, which night
Wears in the zenith moon's full light;
With pebbles shining thro', like gems
Lighting sultana's diadems :”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

(2nd October 1824) The Lake
The London Literary Gazette, 1824

Light , Night

“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

20th August 1825) The Slave Ship (under the pen name Iole
The London Literary Gazette, 1825

Dreams

“On the horizon is a star,
Its earliest, loveliest one by far;
A blush is yet upon the sky,
As if too beautiful to die,—
A last gleam of the setting sun,
Like hope when love has just begun;”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

The Golden Violet - The Broken Spell
The Golden Violet (1827)

Love , Beauty , Hope , Star

“O Earth! all bathed with blood and tears, yet never
Hast thou ceased putting forth thy fruit and flowers;
And hast thou then no pity for mankind?
Can thy maternal breast receive again
Their dust, and yet not throb?”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Translations, From the French

Flowers , Tear , Maternity

“Now, a fancy ball is bad enough in London, where milliners are many, and where theatres have costumes that may be borrowed or copied; but in the country, where people are left to their own devices—truly to them may be applied the old poet's account of murderers, "their fancies are all frightful.””

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Heath's book of Beauty, 1833 (1832)

People , Country

“The favourite volume whose reading we commend, is inevitably connected with ourselves — it must bring to our image those lonely hours when the recurrence of an image has such influence — it invests that image with the associations of poetry and fiction, and thus redeems it from the common-place of ordinary life. There is also the sympathy of taste — and how much may be inferred from a passage pencilled originally for no other eyes but our own. Then, too, a book is the prettiest stepping stone to a correspondence; it seems such a simple thing to write a note of thanks, and so natural to add some slight remark on the author; and how often is the criticism of an author's sentiments but the expression of our own!”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Literary Remains

Life , Books , Nature , Reading

“All, lingering, stayed to gaze
Upon this Eden of the painter's art,
And looking on its loveliness, forgot
The crowded world around them!”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

The Improvisatrice (1824)

World , Art

“The advantages of general independence are too obvious for dispute; but it may be regretted that the rich and poor now-a-days live so far apart : they have no amusements in common, and it is the cheerful hours of life past together that most knit the social ties. The hunt in his forest, and the Christmas by his hearth, drew the baron and his people together, each in their most lightsome mood — the gain was mutual.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Literary Remains

Life , People , Mood , Past

“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

Canto II
The Troubadour (1825)

Love , Heart

“I never saw more perfect loveliness.
It ask'd, it had no aid from dress: her robe
Was white, and simply gather'd in such folds
As suit a statue: neck and arms were bare;
The black hair was unbound, and like a veil
Hung even to her feet; she held a lute,
And, as she paced the ancient gallery, waked
A few wild chords, and murmur'd low sweet words,
But scarcely audible, as if she thought
Rather than spoke:—the night, the solitude,
Fill'd the young Pythoness with poetry.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

A History of the Lyre
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)

Solitude , Perfection , Night

“Then they were silent: words are little aid
To Love, whose deepest vows are ever made
By the heart's beat alone. Oh, silence is
Love's own peculiar eloquence of bliss!”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Rosalie.
The Improvisatrice (1824)

Love , Silence , Heart

“It was my evil star above,
Not my sweet lute, that wrought me wrong;
It was not song that taught me love,
But it was love that taught me song.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Title Poem
The Improvisatrice (1824)

Love , Star , Evil

“My bark is on the ocean riding,
Like a spirit o'er it gliding;
Maiden, wilt thou come—and be
Queen of my fair ship and me?”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

“[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

Bacchus and Ariadne from The London Literary Gazette (2nd November 1822) Dramatic Scene - II.
The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

Love , Beauty , Music , Imagination

“Remembrance makes the poet; 'tis the past
Lingering within him, with a keener sense
Than is upon the thoughts of common men
Of what has been, that fills the actual world
With unreal likenesses of lovely shapes,
That were and are not; and the fairer they,
The more their contrast with existing things,
The more his power, the greater is his grief.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

A History of the Lyre
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)

Love , Men , World , Sense

“I speak of my own feelings—I can judge
Of others but by outward show, and that
Is falser than the actor's studied part.
We dress our words and looks in borrow'd robes:
The mind is as the face—for who goes forth
In public walks without a veil at least?”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

A History of the Lyre
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)

Feeling , Study , Parting

“THE quiet of the evening hour
Was laid on every summer leaf;
That purple shade was on each flower,
At once so beautiful, so brief,
Only the aspen knew not rest,
But still, with an unquiet song,
Kept murmuring to the gentle west,
And cast a changeful shade along.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

The Aspen Tree from The London Literary Gazette (21st August 1830)
The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

Beauty , Flowers , Change , Summer

“We all know that there is evil in the world — we read of it — we hear of it — but we never think of its entering our own charmed circle. Look round our circle of acquaintance; how it would startle us to be asked to name one whom we thought capable of crime; how much more so to find that crime had been committed by one near and dear to our inmost heart. What a moral revulsion would such a discovery produce — how weak we should find ourselves under such a trial — how soon we should begin to disconnect the offender and the offence; then, for the first time, we should begin to understand the full force of temptation, and to allow for its fearful strength; and should we not begin to excuse what had never before seemed capable of palliation?”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

No.11. The Heart of Mid Lothian — JEANNIE DEANS.
Literary Remains

World , Fear , Understanding , Thinking

“But the words of lovers are a language apart; their melody is a fairy song departing with the one haunted hour; to repeat it is to make it commonplace—cold, yet we can all remember it.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

The Monthly Magazine

Lovers