Landon in The Literary Gazette 1825/Reproaches
Literary Gazette, 26th March, 1825, Page 203
ORIGINAL POETRY.
LOVE'S REPROACHES.
I deeply feel what Love
In its holiness should be,
And once there was a time
When such was my love for thee.
But that time is past and gone,
Past like a summer shower;
It was too violent
Not to exhaust its power.
Oh! the bosom will rebel
Against a tyrant's sway,
Tho’ its best blood must be shed,
E're he be driven away.
And thus it was with me;
I may not say how well
I trusted and I loved,—
That your own heart may tell.
If deep fidelity,
That never knew a stain;
If humbleness, like that
Of the slave beneath the chain;
If homage, like that paid
To the monarch on his throne;
If these may not, what may
Show how much I was thine own.
And you took my young heart,
And what did you grave there,
But a deep and deadly lesson,
Its first and last despair.
I am but young in life,
But I have lived thro' years
Of heart burning and sorrow,
Of silence and of tears:
But I am too proud to pine,
And my tears shall be as streams
Cave-locked beneath the earth,
Of whose flowing no one dreams.
I have taught myself to feign
Smiles, till those smiles are now
A second nature to my lip,
A second to my brow.
And when I hear of love,
I will spurn and scorn the name,
Nor ever own I weep; my heart
Is ashes, but not flame.
Aye! it is pride to think
How much the spirit feels
Of agony, and yet
How little it reveals.
Oh, mockery! I would give worlds,
If I could dream again
The dreams, which even in my sleep
I now know are so vain.
But never can I feel
Again as I have done;
And, alas! the waste of life,
When love is wholly gone.L. E. L.