Poetical Fragments from Ethel Churchill Volume I/Resolves

by Letitia Elizabeth Landon

CHAPTER XIII.

A PROPOSAL OF MARRIAGE.

What mockeries are our most firm resolves!
To will is ours, but not to execute.
We map our future like some unknown coast,
And say, "Here is an harbour, here a rock—
The one we will attain, the other shun:"
And we do neither. Some chance gale springs up
And bears us far o'er some unfathomed sea.
Our efforts are all vain; at length we yield
To winds and waves, that laugh at man's control.

Blanchard’s title is:

RESOLVES

In The New York Mirror (3rd March 1838), as Man’s Weakness