Letitia Elizabeth Landon, English poet and novelist, better known by her initials L.E.L... (wikipedia)
Love is a pearl of purest hue, / But stormy waves are round it; / And dearly may a woman rue, / The hour that she found it.
We might have been, these are but common words, and yet they make the sum of life's bewailing
As beautiful as woman's blush, - / As evanescent too.
Ah tell me not that memory / Sheds gladness o'er the past; / What is recalled by faded flowers / Save that they did not last?