Landon in The Literary Gazette 1823/Fragments 1 4
Literary Gazette, 19th April 1823, Page 251
There is a curse laid on the human heart
Which hath a power, beyond all other things,
To wither and to waste:—disease, distress,
Remorse and poverty, are nothing to it!
It comes like winter on the bloom of youth,
Destroying and despoiling, till the cheek
Is pale with that worst famine, want of hope,—
Till the eyes have no brightness but their tears;
Till health be gone with hope, and till the heart
Has not a wish beyond the quiet grave;
When every pulse throbs languidly, and life
Has its best hours still numbered, as they count
The listless moments in the solitude
Of a sick room, but by their weariness.
When pleasure's self is loathed; when feelings turn
With shuddering at the too impassioned past,
Yet shrinking from the cold and gloomy future,
And pine and prey upon the present time,
Having no pity, as Death has on youth,
On loveliness, on genius, or on glory,—
This curse is ill-placed love!----[1]
- ↑ Signature after next poem