Poems of Letitia Elizabeth Landon (L. E. L.) in The Amulet, 1833/The Gentle Student

by Letitia Elizabeth Landon

THE GENTLE STUDENT

Painted by G. S. Newton⁠Engraved by Charles Rolls

THE GENTLE STUDENT.*^[1]

Bend, gentle student, o'er the page,
Although thine be a joyous age—
An age, when hope lifts up its eyes,
And sees but summer in the skies;
And youth leads on its sunny hours,
Like painted ones, whose links are flowers.
Yet bend thy sweet and earnest look
Above that old and holy book.

For there will come another time,
When hope will need a faith sublime,
To lead it on the thorny path
That weary mortal ever hath.
When vain delights have left behind
A fevered and exhausted mind,
And life, with few and wasted years,
Treads mournfully its vale of tears.

Bend o'er the leaf thy graceful brow,
For every word thou readest now
Will sink within thine inmost heart,
Like good seed, never to depart:
A glorious and a great reward,
A sacred and eternal guard,
A sun amid our earthly gloom,
That sets to rise beyond the tomb!
⁠L. E. L.

1.  

   * Vide the Frontispiece.