The Poetical Works of Miss Susanna Blamire (1842) - Gredos ...

The Salamanca Corpus: The Poetical Works of Miss Susanna Blamire (1842)
The droning beetle, whose deep-booming horn
Deaden’d the soft voice of the whispering morn,
Wheels off in haste, nor lets his bugle sound
When Day’s sweet concert wakes the world around;
The murmuring stream, that kept a dying fall,
No more complains, but from the mansion all
In secret channels hides from cheerful day,
And silent works his subterraneous way;
The mournful evergreens that crowd the door,
And wander all the gloomy garden o’er,
All creep about where cheering light should stray
And boldly venture into open day;
Through whose dark shades the lulling winds wouldsound,
Kiss the tall grass, and sigh along the ground;
The early bird, that rises with the day,
Rock’d by soft zephyrs slept the morn away;
And drizzling rain left such a weight on air,
That owls at midnight nod in ivy chair;
These Health destroy’d; for, from their bending boughs,
Nightly the noxious dew distils, and throws
Its baneful influence o’er the powers of rest,
For those who sleep but little sleep the best:
Not drowsy beings that, till noon-tide pours
His sultry steam, and drinks the breath of flowers,
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Know the full vigour of a nerve unstrung,
Or, while in youths—as ought the being young—
Know not that breezes rising with the morn
Make them as light as dew-drops on the thorn,—
As gay as larks that, warbling as they fly,
Bear the first message to the morning sky;—
Fleet as the roe, that o’er the mountain bounds
When first his ear is threaten’d by the hounds;—
Cheerful as sunbeams that with lilies play,
Tinging with gold their paler looks away.
Thus, when weak mortals feel thy power to charm,
And the cold bosom grows a little warm,
’Tis then thy influence the mind must share,
Moulding to virtue, and the bliss of prayer,—
To moral duties by Religion taught,
Till the blest man becomes the man he ought.
This is thy charge, by Jove himself design’d;