Landon in The Literary Gazette 1825/Stanzas 2
Literary Gazette, 12th March, 1825, Page 173
ORIGINAL POETRY.
STANZAS.
Is this your Creed of Love? It is enough
To make one loathe the very name of love.
Love is too great a stake for this child’s play—
This trifling with your happiness. What! win,
And then not wear, the heart that you have won,
Till you have rackt each nerve, till you have wrung
The life blood forth in tears; and this forsooth,
For that its depths of passion will be food
To the most selfish of all vanity:
Oh shame;—deep shame!
Well, indeed, may you deem,
That Love is woe and pain,
That all its griefs are real,
And all its joys are vain.
While your Creed of Love is like
What you say that creed to be,
It is the heart creates
Its own bliss and misery.
To try, but not to trust—
To doubt, and to deride—
To trifle, and to torture;
And can this be your pride?
To bid the cheek grow pale,
The lip lose its gaiety,
The eye forget its light,
So it is for love of thee.
This could but teach the heart,
Its tenderness to hide,
For, deep as is a woman's love,
'Tis equall'd by her pride.
What must a woman feel,
Whose very soul is given
To that wild love—whose world must be
Her all of Hell or Heaven?
Then to meet the careless smile,
Look on the altered eye,
See it on others dwell, and pass
Herself regardless by.
And having drained the bitter dregs,
All bitterness above,
Of slighted love—then to be told,
'Twas but to try your love.
The heart that could bear this
Must be of stone or steel;
The heart that broke not with such wrong,
Was not made love to feel.
Alas! for her whose love
Is fated thine to be;
Better the heart should break
Than beat for one like thee.L. E. L.