Sissi (Sisi) and L.E.L. on Corfu; Empress Elisabeth of Austria; Letitia Elizabeth Landon.

Empress Elisabeth of Austria ('Sissi' or 'Sisi', 1837-1898) and L.E.L (Letitia Elizabeth Landon, 1802-1838) may not have had much in common, even as poets, and yet they were both poets in the romantic tradition, and they both died tragic deaths. Both of them wrote post-Romantic poems about Corfu.

Here are two by L.E.L.:

Corfu (1)

Corfu (2)

Sisi's Corfiot poems (in German) can be found in this collection:

From Abschied und Rückfahrt, 15 November, 1887:

"But I return to your bays

If life's storm displeases me.

What I and my seagulls were seeking,

I find here, Peace, away from the world"

Some more brief translated excerpts from her Corfu poems can be found in my book, The Ionian Islands and Epirus, A Cultural History (Signal Books, Oxford)