Poems of Letitia Elizabeth Landon (L. E. L.) in Finden’s Gallery of the Graces (1834)/The Ladye Adeline
The Lady Adeline
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THE LADYE ADELINE.
BY L. E. L.
"Ah what could the Lady's beauty match
An it were not the Lady's pride."
The ladye of the festive board
Was ward to the castle's absent lord;
The Ladye Adeline—the same
Bright vision that with their greeting came.
On the knot of her wreathed hair was set
A blood-red ruby coronet:
And pearls the orient and the rare,
Braided the folds of her raven hair;
White they were, but their stainless snow
Was dim to the forehead that shone below.
Around her floated a veil of white,
Like the silvery rack round the star of twilight.
But yet there was mid her excess
Of bright and dazzling loveliness,
A something in the eye and hand,
And forehead speaking of command:
An eye whose dark flash seemed allied
To even more than beauty's pride;—
A hand as only used to wave
Its sign to worshipper and slave.—
A forehead—but that was too fair
To read of aught save beauty there.
Beautiful, but thrice wayward, wild,
Capricious as a petted child,
She was all chance, all change; but now
A smile is on her radiant brow,—
A moment, and that smile is fled—
Contempt and scorn are there instead.
Ah, every change of beauty's face
And beauty's mood has its own grace.
(from “THE TROUBADOUR.”)