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

The Salamanca Corpus: The Poetical Works of Miss Susanna Blamire (1842)
ON THE DANGEROUS-ILLNESS OF MY FRIEND
MRS L.
13TH MAY, 1788.
WHAT is’t to me though Earth’s green lap be spread
With new-sprung flowers, the first-born of the year!
The smirking daisy and the cowslip tall
May walk the mead, or wander near the brook;
The liquid mirror may reflect the tree
Whose opening leaves now mottle all the stream;
Their fluttering tenants, crowding cliff and spray,
May the green curtain tight and closely draw,
To hide the habitation, wove with care,
And all the fostering secrecy of love.
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The gilded insect basking in the son,
Fann d by his light, and many a colour’d wing,
Now shows with how much care Nature adorns
Her smallest work. What are all these to me!
My thoughts from pleasure and from former joys
Start wild away; Amusement’s silver cords
Bind on the fancy no one form of bliss;
I try to lose myself, but still pursu d
By Fear, I only fly to agony of mind,
There lose the sight of all but one sad grief,
Which sits enthrond within this aching heart.
The fairest lily of the field now droops,—
Hangs low the head, where Beauty soft had wove
Those sweet entanglements that hold the eye,
And through her silken veil would fondly show
The various workings of the virtuous soul;
The heart look’d through, and spread along the face
The sentimental trait that mark’d the mind.
Compassion oft would bud into a tear,
And honest Scorn would flush the redd’ning cheek,
When harsh conclusions or ungenerous truths
Would drop like gall from the satiric tongue.
Worth she approv’d, however mean array’d;
And greatness could not charm but by the soul.
Her accents fell with such a melting sound