Letitia Elizabeth Landon (L E L)
Songs published in Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1835
COTTAGE COURTSHIP
Now, out upon this smiling,
No smile shall meet his sight ;
And a word of gay reviling
Is all he'll hear to-night,
For he'll hold my smiles too lightly,
If he always sees me smile ;
He'll think they shine more brightly
When I have frown'd awhile.
‘Tis not kindness keeps a lover,
He must feel the chain he wears ;
All the sweet enchantment's over,
When he has no anxious cares.
The heart would seem too common,
If he thought that heart his own ;
Ah ! the empire of a woman
Is still in the unknown.
Let change without a reason,
Make him never feel secure ;
For it is an April season
That a lover must endure.
They are all of them so faithless.
Their torment is your gain ;
Would you keep your own heart scathless,
Be the one to give the pain.
IVY BRIDGE, DEVONSHIRE
O, RECALL not the past, though this valley be fill'd
With all we remember, and all we regret ;
The flowers of its summer have long been distill'd,
The essence has perish’d, ah ! let us forget.
What avails it to mourn over hours that are gone,
O'er illusions by youth and by fantasy nurst !
Alas ! of the few that are lingering, none
Wear the light or the hues that encircled the first.
Alas for the springtime ! alas for our youth !
The grave has no slumber more cold than the heart,
When languid and darken'd it sinks into truth,
And sees the sweet colours of morning depart.
Life still has its falsehoods to lure and to leave,
But they cannot delude like the earlier light ;
We know that the twilight encircles the eve,
And sunset is only the rainbow of night.
THE ORPHAN BALLAD SINGERS
O, WEARY, weary are our feet,
And weary, weary is our way ;
Through many a long and crowded street
We've wander'd mournfully to-day.
My little sister she is pale;
She is too tender and too young
To bear the autumn's sullen gale,
And all day long the child has sung.
She was our mother's favourite child,
Who loved her for her eyes of blue,
And she is delicate and mild,
She cannot do what I can do.
She never met her father's eyes,
Although they were so like her own ;
In some fur distant sea he lies,
A father to his child unknown.
The first time that she lisp'd his name,
A little playful thing was she ;
How proud we were,—yet that night como
The talc how he had sunk at sea.
My mother never raised her head ;
How strange, how while, how cold she grew !
It was a broken heart they said—
I wish our hearts were broken too.
We have no home—we have no friends,
They said our home no more was ours ;
Our cottage where the ash tree bends,
The garden we had fill'd with flowers.
The sounding shells our father brought,
That we might hear the sea at home ;
Our bees, that in the summer wrought
The winter's golden honeycomb.
We wandcr'd forth 'mid wind and rain,
No shelter from the open sky ;
I only wish to see again
My mother's grave, and rest and die.
Alas, it is a weary thing
To sing our ballads o'er and o'er ;
The songs we used at home to sing—
Alas, we have a home no more !