Page:Sarah Sheppard - L. E. L.pdf/66





The future never renders to the past The young beliefs entrusted to its keeping; Inscribe one sentence-life's first truth and last On the pale marble where our dust is sleeping, We might have been! New Monthly Magazine. With regard to the mechanism of L. E. L.'s poetry, we need only observe that it is generally delicate and graceful. Her versification is so varied that it seems to change with every changing key-note of thought. There is melody pleasing to the ear, yet modulated in adaptation to the sentiment.

 

closing this imperfect sketch, there are two points of view in which we would place L. E. L.'s works, the one regarding those works as a woman's productions, the other marking their tendency. The spirit of Miss Landon's writings is essentially feminine in all that blends tenderness, delicacy and devotedness of feeling. We have previously considered the frequent introduction of love, and therefore need only further observe, that it is a love which only a woman could depict in its truthfulness, self denial and disinterestedness. If in any instance it is wrought up to a higher intensity of feeling, of feeling leading to crime, then, too, does womanly propriety, combined with a delicate and correct judgment, manifest all rightful indignation against evil. There is not a more remarkable instance of this than in the striking portraiture of Amenaïde, in "The Venetian Bracelet;" a poem which, though, as a whole, we like the least of L. E. L.'s, is, perhaps, one of the most valuable as a study, for its 