Poetical Fragments from Ethel Churchill Volume I/Love’s Timidity

by Letitia Elizabeth Landon

CHAPTER XII.

DIFFICULTIES.

I do not ask to offer thee
    A timid love like mine;
I lay it, as the rose is laid,
    On some immortal shrine.

I have no hope in loving thee,
    I only ask to love;
I brood upon my silent heart,
    As on its nest the dove.

But little have I been beloved,
    Sad, silent, and alone;
And yet I feel, in loving thee,
    The wide world is mine own.

Thine is the name I breathe to Heaven.
    Thy face is on my sleep;
I only ask that love like this
    May pray for thee and weep.

Blanchard’s title is:

LOVE’S TIMIDITY

In The New York Mirror (3rd March 1838)
and in The New Yorker (10th March 1838), both as Hopeless Love
In the Bouquet (1846), under Love-Lies-Bleeding (Amaranthus hypochondricus) as
Hopeless, not heartless

Musical settings:

G. Romani, 1845 in Graham’s Illustrated Magazine
George Linley (1798-1865) as ‘Constance’, 1847
James E. Macgruder, 1855, Baltimore