Three weeks after the Medallion Wafers were first advertised, the first poems in L.E.L.'s "Medallion Wafer" series were published. The first of these poems established themes connecting the physical medallion wafers and the classical themes of the poems that would follow: fragility, mutability, and the questionable endurance of love. Read the first installment in Gazette on Google Books. (Second installment) (Third installment)

The following headnote appears with the first installment of Medallion Wafer poems. (The brackets in the headnote are original; elsewhere, they denote my comments):

MEDALLION WAFERS.
[The hint for this series of Poems (to be continued occasionally) has been taken from the account of the Medallion Wafers in the Literary Gazette. These slight things preserve many of the most beautiful forms of antiquity; and they are here devoted to verse, on the supposition that they have been employed as seals to lovers’ correspondence.]

[From Issue #314, 25 January 1823 (p 60 in the collected Gazette for that year)
Discussed in: http://medallionwafers.wordpress.com/tag/introduction/]

INTRODUCTION.
I do so prize the slightest thing
  Touched, looked, or breathed upon by thee,
That all or aught which can but bring
  One single thought of thine to me,
Is precious as a pilgrim’s gift
Upon the shrine he most loves left.

And if, like those charmed caves that weep,
  Preserving tears of crystal dew,
My lute’s flow has a power to keep
  From perishing what it shrines too--
It only shall preserve the things
Bearing the bright print of Love’s wings.

Here’s many a youth with radiant brow
  Darkened by raven curls like thine,
Beauty, whose smile burns even now,
  And love-tales made by song divine:
And these have been the guardian powers
To words as sweet as summer flowers.

I’ll tell thee now the history
  Of these sweet shapes: they are so dear,
Each has been on a scroll form thee;
  Thy kiss, thy sigh, are glowing here:
They’ll be the spirit of each tone
I fain would wake from chords long gone.

Just glimpses of the fairest dreams
  I’ve had when in a hot noon sleeping,
Or those diviner, wilder gleams
  When I some starry watch was keeping;
And sometimes those bright waves of thought
Only from lips like thine, Love, caught.

Oh dear, these lights form the old world,
  So redolent with love and song!
Those radiant gods, now downward hurled
  From the bright thrones they held so long!
But they have power that cannot die
Over heart’s eternity.

[From Issue #314, 25 January 1823 (p 60 in the collected Gazette for that year)
Discussed in http://medallionwafers.wordpress.com/tag/cupid-riding-a-peacock/]

CUPID RIDING A PEACOCK.
All the colours glistening
On the rainbow of the spring,
Mingled with the deeper hue
Of the grass green emerald too,
Are upon that bird, whose neck
Crimson wreaths of roses deck,--
Mounted by a Boy, whose lip
Is such as the bee would sip
For the first rosebud in May.
  Love, upon a summer day,
Bade the Graces link a chain
Of sweet flowers, for a rein
Round the peacock’s glorious wing.
Forth he rode; then, like the king
Of bright colours, smiles, and blooms,
Sunny darts and golden plumes.
  Oh this is not that sweet love
Own companion to the dove;
But a wild and wandering thing,
Varying as the lights that fling
Radiance o’er his peacock’s wing.
I do weep, that Love should be
Ever linked with Vanity.

[From Issue #314, 25 January 1823 (p 60 in the collected Gazette for that year)
Discussed in: http://medallionwafers.wordpress.com/tag/Atalanta

Atalanta was a renowned huntress who refused to submit to marriage unless the man could best her in a race. None could, until one man (sometimes reported to be Melanion, sometimes Hippomenes) asked Venus to help him. She gave him three golden apples that he used to distract Atalanta, allowing him to defeat her and win her for his wife.]

ATALANTA, represented as a Huntress with her bow.
A Huntress with her silver bow,
And radiant curls upon the snow
Of a young brow, whose open look
Was fair and pure as the clear brook
On which the moonlight plays; ‘tis she,
Companion of the forest tree,
Of Scyrus, she whose foot of wind
Left stag and arrow far behind,
Whose heart, like air or sunshine free,
Recked but to scorn what love might be.
“My soul is far too proud for love;
I would be like yon lark above,
With will and power to wing my way,
With none to watch and none to stay;
And Love’s chain would be sad to me
As were a cage, free bird, to thee.
Ill would it suit a heart like mine
To live upon another’s look;
Ill could I bear the doubts, the griefs,
The all that anxious love must brook.
Thou bright winged god! I mock thy chain,
Thy arrow points to me in vain.”
But maiden vows are like the rose,
Bending with every breeze that blows;
Or like the sparkles on the stream,
Changing with every changing gleam;
Or like the colours on her cheek,
Or like the words her lips will speak,
Each firm resolve will melt away
Like ice before a sunny ray.
Soon that young Huntress of the grove
Bartered her liberty for love,
And sighed and smiled beneath the thrall
Of him whose rule is over all.

-L. E. L.

[Landon's use of her initials became famous; as Laman Blanchard wrote in his 1842 biography of Landon, “Not only was the whole tribe of initialists throughout the land eclipsed, but the initials became a name” [emphasis original] (30).]