Poetical Fragments from Ethel Churchill Volume I/Experience Too Late

by Letitia Elizabeth Landon

CHAPTER XV.

THE CONSENT.

It is the past that maketh my despair;
The dark, the sad, the irrevocable past.
Alas! why should our lot in life be made,
Before we know that life? Experience comes,
But comes too late. If I could now recall
All that I now regret, how different
Would be my choice! at best a choice of ill;
But better than my miserable past.
Loathed, yet despised, why must I think of it?

Blanchard’s title is:

EXPERIENCE TOO LATE

In The New York Mirror (3rd March 1838), as Remorse

In the Bouquet (1846), under (Lupine) Lupinus hirsutus as Dejection, Sorrow

The first two lines appear as a quotation (signed L. E. L.) at the beginning of
Francesca Carrara, Volume 3. However, I cannot find any trace of it earlier than that.