The Improvisatrice; and Other Poems/Love, Hope, and Beauty

by Letitia Elizabeth Landon

LOVE, HOPE, AND BEAUTY.

Love may be increased with fears,
      May be fanned with sighs,
Nurst by fancies, fed by doubts;
      But without Hope it dies!
As in the far Indian isles
      Dies the young cocoa-tree,
Unless within the pleasant shade
      Of the parent plant it be:
So Love may spring up at first,
      Lighted at Beauty's eyes;—
But Beauty is not all its life,
      For without Hope it dies.