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

The Salamanca Corpus: The Poetical Works of Miss Susanna Blamire (1842)
found in her writings, we gather that her constitution was never robust; but her good sense
would not allow her to complain and injure the feelings of her friends; she was always
patient—always thankful for all their attention and care. Under that easy gayety with which
she at all times mingled in society, was concealed a thoughtful mind, which glanced with
no superficial gaze at whatever was going on around her. Drs Harrington and Blamire of
Carlisle attended her in her last illness with the most affectionate solicitude. As her last
hour drew nigh, she desired her friend Mrs Pearson, who was with her, to pray, for she felt
a conviction she had not long to live; she complied with her request, and Susanna thanked
her, adding she was happy, and felt that peace of God which passeth all understanding, only
known in the Christian’s faith. She then tasted a little wine, laid her head on the pillow, and
expired within half an hour without a groan. Miss Blamire died in Carlisle at about four
o’clock in the afternoon of Saturday, 5th April, 1794, in the forty-seventh year of her age;
and was buried on the Wednesday following at Raughton-Head. The manner in which her
memory was held is well exemplified by the fact, that between eighty and ninety people
attended the funeral, the distance being seven miles, and that without any invitation. So
poignant was the grief of Mrs
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Graham, that she never afterwards could approach her sister s grave.
Miss Blamire’s character may be gathered from her writings; her heart flowed with
her pen; and the kindly expressions of her well-regulated mind and keen feelings are all
undisguisedly exhibited to us as to a friend. She wrote not for the public, but because it
gave her pleasure to embody her thoughts in verse; had it been otherwise, it is difficult to
understand how one so talented could not but have found a ready publisher. If I am correct
in supposing that her longest poem “Stoklewath” was composed in 1771 , when about
twenty-four years of age, at which time her sister Sarah was the wife of Colonel Graham,
we find her young affections strongly breaking forth in the mention of her sister and her
brother in the last paragraph but one of that poem, and giving a playful glance at her own
character. Her love for her relations is again finely displayed in her poem of “The Invitation
to two Sisters.” There is a pun here introduced—seldom, and properly, attempted in serious
poetry—yet so simply and kindly, that I cannot help taking notice of it. She has been
describing the beauties of the landscape she invited them to witness, in all its gorgeousness
of summer and autumnal clothing; yet, when the winter comes, if she have her friends
around her, these would “yield a pro-
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spect more charming than May.” But without these friends, with all the advantages of “the
wood-hanging bank, and the cottage so still,” her regrets for the want of their conversation
would always be renewed
“As she listen’d and heard the soft dock of the mill.”
In the last paragraph of her “Address to Health,” she again exultingly breaks forth in