Life & Wisdom Quote by Walter Savage Landor

Desire is staged here as a duel with choreography: “The Siren waits thee” gives temptation patience, poise, and confidence, as if it already owns the ending. Landor’s choice of “thee” isn’t mere antique dressing; it pulls the reader into the older moral theater where peril arrives wearing art, not brute force. The Siren isn’t chasing. She’s waiting, because the trap that works best is the one you walk into willingly.

“singing song for song” is the dagger. It implies a call-and-response, a seductive mirroring. The Siren doesn’t just offer pleasure; she offers recognition. Whatever you bring to the shore - your own music, your own longing, your own narrative about who you are - she answers in kind, refining it, flattering it, making it feel fated. The subtext is that temptation is rarely alien; it’s bespoke. It harmonizes with the self you already perform.

Contextually, Landor wrote in the long Romantic afterglow where classical myth was less museum piece than psychological equipment. The Siren motif arrives freighted with Homeric warning but also with Romantic fascination: the peril of art itself, of beauty that overwhelms judgment. “waits” suggests not only erotic danger but aesthetic danger - the lure of the perfect lyric that costs you your bearings. Landor compresses a whole philosophy of self-deception into a single neat echo: you’re not conquered by the Siren’s song until you start singing back.