Poems of Letitia Elizabeth Landon (L. E. L.) in Finden’s Gallery of the Graces (1834)/A Pleasant Memory
The Pleasing Thought
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A PLEASANT MEMORY.
BY L. E. L.
Ah! little do those features wear
The shade of grief, the soil of care;
The hair is parted o'er a brow
Open and white as mountain snow,
And thence descends in many a ring,
With sun and summer glistening.
Yet something on that brow has wrought
A moment's cast of passing thought:
Musing of gentle dreams, like those
Which tint the slumbers of the rose:
Not love,—love is not yet with thee—
But just a glimpse what love may be:
A memory of some last night's sigh,
When flitting blush and drooping eye
Answer'd some youthful cavalier,
Whose words sank pleasant on thine ear,
To stir, but not to fill the heart;—
Dreaming of such, fair girl, thou art.
Thou blessed season of our spring,
When hopes are angels on the wing;
Bound upwards to their heavenly shore,
Alas! to visit earth no more,
Then step and laugh alike are light,
When, like a summer morning bright,
Our spirits in their mirth are such,
As turn to gold whate'er they touch.
The past! 'tis nothing,—childhood's day
Has rolled too recently away,
For youth to shed those mournful tears
That fill the eye in older years,
When care looks back on that bright leaf,
Of ready smiles and short-lived grief.
The future! 'tis the promised land,
To which Hope points with prophet hand,
Telling us fairy tales of flowers
That only change for fruit—and ours.
Though false, though fleeting, and though vain,
Thou blessed time I say again.
Glad being, with thy downcast eyes,
And visionary look that lies
Beneath their shadow, thou shalt share
A world, where all my treasures are—
My lute's sweet empire, filled with all
That will obey my spirit's call;
A world lit up by fancy's sun!
Ah! little like our actual one.