Poems of Letitia Elizabeth Landon (L. E. L.) in Heath’s Book of Beauty, 1833/Belinda

by Letitia Elizabeth Landon

BELINDA

Painted by Miss Eliza SharpeEngraved by H. Robinson

BELINDA;

OR,

THE LOVE-LETTER.

Another soft and scented page,
    Fill'd with more honied words!
What motives to a pilgrimage
    A shrine like mine affords!
I know, before I break the seal,
    The words that I shall find:—
"The wound which you alone can heal—
    So fair, yet so unkind!"

There, take your fortune on the wind!
    Ah, how the breeze has borne
(As if our malice were combined)
    The fragments I have torn!
So let the vows they offer pass—
    Vows fugitive and vain;
I should as soon expect the glass
    My image to retain.

I care not for a heart whose youth
    Is gone before its years,
Which makes a mockery of truth,
    Which finds a boast in tears.
That is not love, when idleness
    Would fill a listless hour—
'Tis vanity, which prizes less
    The passion than the power.

I hold that love which can be kept
    As silent as the grave,
And pure as dews by evening wept
    Upon the heaving wave—
Embodying all life's poetry.
    Its highest, dearest part:
And till such love my own may be,
    I bear a charmed heart.