Poems of Letitia Elizabeth Landon (L. E. L.) in The Amulet, 1831/The Offering
THE OFFERING.
BY L. E. L.
There is a beauty vanishes away
From earth, and from earth's loveliest; we can see
The moonlight falling on the silvered lake,
The rose unfolding the deep crimson leaves
Where love-thoughts once were writ, the quiet stars
Like angels glorifying the still night.
They do not wear the light that once they wore,
Their poetry is gone—for that which made
The spirit of their beauty was in us
And from ourselves, and we are wholly changed,
And look on things with cold and altered eyes;
For the grave casts its darkness long before
We stand upon its brink!
I see them fading round me,
The beautiful, the bright,
As the rose-red lights that darken
At the falling of the night.
I had a lute, whose music
Made sweet the summer wind,
But the broken strings have vanished
And no song remains behind.
I had a lonely garden,
Fruit and flowers on every bough,
But the frost came too severely—
'Tis decayed and blighted now.
That lute is like my spirits—
They have lost their buoyant tone;
Crushed and shattered, they've forgotten
The glad notes once their own.
And my mind is like that garden—
It has spent its early store;
And wearied and exhausted,
It has no strength for more.
I will look on them as warnings,
Sent less in wrath than love,
To call the being homeward—
To its other home above.
As the Lesbian in false worship
Hung her harp upon the shrine,
When the world lost its attraction,
So will I offer mine:—
But in another spirit,
With a higher hope and aim,
And in a holier temple,
And to a holier name.
I offer up affections,
Void, violent, and vain;
I offer years of sorrow
Of the mind, and body's pain:
I offer up my memory—
'Tis a drear and darkened page,
Where experience has been bitter,
And whose youth has been like age.
I offer hopes, whose folly
Only after-thoughts can know,
For instead of seeking heaven
They were chained to earth below!
Saying, wrong and grief have brought me
To thy altar as a home;
I am sad and broken-hearted,
And therefore am I come.
Let the incense of my sorrow,
Be on high, a sacrifice;
The worn and contrite spirit
Thou alone wouldst not despise!