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Show 470 Remarks on Vartous Late Poets, No. 5-L. E. L. (AuGUST, And otber plants must fade or fall Benell.th its cleep find deadly thrall. This is love'semhlem; it is nursed In all unconsciousnes~ at first, Too slight, too fair, t.o wttke 1li~trult; From SUI'h dreams all too soon we wake; For, like the moonlight on the lake, One passing cloud, one waving Uough, The~ilverlight, where is it now?" No sign how that an after hour As migllt be expected from a female pen, we Will rue and weep its fatal power." have many eloquent and touching descriptions of The delicious, \'ision-like opening of Love's ~voman's love and constancy. _She usu_ally pai_nts day.dream, before the sun which beautifies the tt as the one deep, all~absorbtng passwn, wht_ch early morning has acquired fierceness enough 10 e_ng~osses the whole bemg and can part h~tt wt~h wither the flowers it gave birth to, is one of her life Itself. \.Ye therefore cannot ft!el surpnsed, m frequent themes, which she handles with singular poetry s~ darkcn~d by s_a.dness,_ to find h~w often grace and delicacy. The followin~~" Jines are nood. her heromcs pertsh of JJI . requtted affectton; the "' " passion in which she delights can know no medium; "Yes, love has happy hours, \\ hich rise and, unable to spend itself on its object, preys upon O'er earth as over Paradis('. the heart and destroys it. Hours which o'er life's worst darkness fling Colors a~ from an angel's wing, \Vhich ~ild the common, soothe the drear, Bring heaven down to earth's colt! sphere: But never has it euch an hour As in its fiut unspoken power. No hue has faded from its Lloom, No light has fallen from its plumeNo after fear, no common care Has weighed on its enchanted air. Mortality forgets it.s thrRl!; ltstandsathingapnrtfrornall- A thing alas! too soon t.o IJe Numbered :tmongthc things that were, A::t. morning hues upon the o~~ea Fade as they neverharll.lecn there. But ere those charmed lights departThere is no future for the heart!" The image contained in the subjoined passage is well imagined and felicitously expressed. "And this, then, islo\·e's ending! It is like 1'he history of some fair southern clime. Hot fires are in the ho»om of the earth, And the warm'd soil puts forth its thousand flowers, llsfruitsof gold, summer's regality, And sleep and odors Aoat upon the air: At length the subterranean element Breaks from its secret dwelling place, and lays All waste Ucfore it; the red lava stream Sweeps like the pestilence; and that which was A garden in its colors and its breath, Js 11s a desert, in whose burning sands Anrl ashy \\alerl'l, who i.:; there can trace A sign, a m!"!mory of it.s former beauty? It is thus with the heart." Lover's vows arc a very proverb, and not injudiciously are they treated of thus: " Little love asks of language aid, For never yet h:tth vow been made In that young hour when love is new; He feels at first so deep, so true, A promise is a useless token, When neither deem it can be broken. Alas! vows arc his after sign!- We prop the tree in its decline- The ghosts that haunts parting hour With al! of grief, and naught of power; A chain half sundererl in the makingThe plighted vow's already break in~;. ",\Jan'sloveisof man'slifeathingapart;' Tis woman's whole existence?" This is her favorite text, and some of the discourses founded on it are equally beautiful and true. "There is a feeling in the heart Of woman, which c-an lntvc no pa1t In man; a self.devotedness As victims round thl'ir idol press, And asking nothing but to show How far their zeal and faith can go. Pure as the snow the summer sun Never at noon hath looked upon,Deep as is the diamond wave, Hid,!en in thede~ert cave,Changclessasthegrecnestleaves Of the wreath the cypress weaves,Hopeless often when most fond, Without hope or fear beyond lts own pale fidelity." Thus Ariadne is a freqnent theme for her pen, as the type of woman trusting and deceived. ] 11 the volume of her posthumous poems is a. powerful picture of the desolation and despair of the Cretan princess. "\Ve wish that we could quote !he whole of this beautiful little poem, but must be content with the first and last stanzas. "Lonely-lonely on the shore Where the mighty waters roar,\ Vould that she could pass them o'er! Doth the maiden stand. Those small ivory feet are bare; Hosy as the smal!shellsare, They are, than the feet less fair, On that sea beat strand! 'Vherefore doth the girl complain? Wind and wave will hear in vain. "There the Cretan maiden stands, Wringing her despairing hands, Lonely, on the lonely sands,- 'Tis a v.oman'slot; Only lr.t her heart loe won And her summer hour ia done,Soon is she forgot; Sad she strays IJy life's IJicak shore, Loving, but beloved no more!" 1845.] Remarks on Various Late Poets, No. 5-L. E. L. 471 ln the above passages, we feel that we have another volume,-" The ImprO\'isatrice and other shown .l'rfiss Landon's powers in their most fa.vora- Poems,1' which displayed talents superior to any ble light. The chief fault that we ha\'e to find with thing she had before exhibited. The fertility of her her lyre is its want of compass. She is master of pen was fully e vinced. ln 1825, but a year after but few strings, and though on these she plays with the last volume, appeared another,'' The Troubamingled strength and sweetness, we rrmst not forget dour;" in 1820, "The Golden Violet," all large that the human heart is an instrument of many volumes containing much true poetry. Then fulchords, and that a poet of the highest order pos- lowed a novel or two; and in 182!), "The Venetian sesses mastery over all. This could scarcely be Bracelet," a work which, with its accompanying expected of a woman, and is one of the reasons why poems, shows great improvement upon its predeone of that sex can never hope for a place among cessors. During the whole of this period, she was the chosen few of Apollo. \Vhile confining her- a constant and regular contributor to numerous self to these favorite subjects, l\'liss Landon ascends magazines, reviews, annuals and other ingenious to reg-ions of high inspiration, but quitting them, vehicles for frittering away genius, producing an she enters an atmosphere to which her flying steed unknown number of essays, songs, scraps of poeis unaccustomed, and he descends rapidly to earth. try, critiques, &c., &c. To this rapidity of exeIn her numberless tales of the heart, she displays cution we may trace most of her fauhs, ::wd it is to much invention, line pathos, strong, yet delicate be atlributed not only to the re'ldiness and fertility imagination, and a lively fancy. Yet, tllough the of her genius, but also to the fact that she wrote for inciden!s and observations are, in general, skilfully money. 'Ve do not mention this as a matter for varied, we are often struck by repetitions which cavelling, for it forms one of the best points in her are scarcely to be avoided in the numerous discrip- character, that after the death of her father, which tions of one phase of human passion, written, as took place when she was hut twenty-three, she not they were, through the course of many years. She only supported herself by her pen, but contributed usually throws her story in India, or Spain, or It aly, largely, by her unwearying exertions, to the comsome region of the sunny South, and in the times fort of ber mother and a younger brother. This, of chivalry, where her imagination can luxuriate though we may admire the strength and independence in the splendor of nature, and roam unchecked by of her spirit, detracts from her standing ss a poet. the dull realities of her own country and the pre- Such is not the inspiration that leads to a lasting sent time. H er pictures of men and things a re fame, and hers from it will suffer materially. Under too romantic for life, but what would shock us as such circumstances, an author naturally feels that unnatural, if presented as a transcnpt of things every additional line is a. gai n, and every additional daily around us, seen through the mist of years and hour spent over it a loss. Hence arises prolixity, redistances, assumes a semblance of reality. This petition, and carelessness, which many of trliss Lanis not a prnof of an elevated order of genius, for don's poems exhibit to a considerable degree. She those times and places are in themselves poetry to who declares that" she never in her life knew what us, and need not the close attention to truth and it was to have two new dresses at a time" may be skilful taste which is requisite in treating of that excused, if she occasionally allowed the earthly inwhich is before our eyes every day, throwing the centive to domineer over the heavenly, but in viewmantle of inspiration round the incidents of com- ing her poetry i_mpartially, we must take it as we mon life, and redeeming them from their native find it. We can thus only grieve over the frequent earthliness. repetition and sameness, and the carelessness of The literary career of L. E. L., (we can not language and versification which arC" only two combring ourselves to call her Mrs. Maclean.) was sin· mon, and the prolixity which injures the effect of gularly fortunate in a worldly point of view; and. many of her hcst productions. This is the more what is more, was well deserved. A poet almost to he regretted, as we !eel that her lively and powerfrom her cradle, she showed the precocity which ful imagination and fertile invention, with but little seems ever the attendant on female genius. "\Vhen nwre time and care, might have saved her altogether but eighteen, she puhlished a small volume of from the accusation of repeating herself; many of poems which met with linlc encouragement, and as her tales are scarcely more than a rifacciameuto of it has not escaped the ravagC"s of Time, we pre- eal"lier ones, and it was beneath the reputation of sume that, in the words of her biographer, Laman one who possessed so ready and facile a. pen to exBlanchard," it was \·alt:able only as containing evi. tract long llassages, slightJ.ii..altered from her fordenecs of genius." From that time until her mer poems, and prefix the~s "original" mottoes twenty-second year she was a r,onstant and prolific to the chapters in Ethel Churchill. Sh~ always contributor to the "Literary Gazette," puhlishing boasted that it gave her less trouble to wrtte a pasa vast number of beautiful little poems, under the sage suiting her purpose, than to hunt it out in signature of" L. E. L.," which speedily became as other poets, and many of the fragments tlms prowcll known as the full cognomen of any of the duced are among the choicest morceaux of her bards of the day. When twenty-two, she issued poetry. Occasionally, however, she allowed her- |