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

The Salamanca Corpus: The Poetical Works of Miss Susanna Blamire (1842)
the praise of her sisters; it is delightful to see this, for it proves to us how reciprocal was the
attachment between them:
“But what have I of comfort lost,
That healthier, stouter frames can boast!
Have I not sisters, ever near, O ever kind!
O ever dear! Who suffer not the winds to wave
O’er the bent shrub they prop and save.
From Autumn’s faded form they hide,
And Winter’s stripping hand they guide;
And even midst the Summer’s heat
An equal watchfulness I meet.
Away then, Health! thy powers are vain,
Thou canst not touch my soul with pain!”
“On the dangerous illness of my friend Mrs L.,” the elegant “Address to Miss Gale on her
marriage,” the “Elegy on the death of Mrs Dacre,” all bespeak the ardour of her
attachments. The epistles to her friends at Gartmore, too, afford a fine exhibition of her
kindness of heart and playful disposition. The first of these I was so fortunate as to extract
from an old MS. in Mrs
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Brown’s collection; it is quite biographical, and gives us a fine glimpse, freely and
unreservedly, into her character. Of a being so amiable, whose beauty and accomplishments
were acknowledged by all, it would have been more than surprising had her hand never
been sought in marriage. It is however said that a scion of a noble house aspired to that
honour; but, for reasons not very apparent, his family did not find it expedient to encourage
the connexion, and hence it was broken off. That she would have reflected a dignity, not
usually attendant on wealth and distinction, on any house however numerous its heraldic
quarterings, all who have seen her mind, as revealed in her writings, will readily
acknowledge. I am strongly disposed to believe that this story is true, and that the
attachment on her part was so pure, so strong, that she never afterwards allowed the feeling
to be supplanted. It is to this passage of her life, I think, that we owe many, if not all, of
those exquisite delineations of the heart which are so frequently met with in her writings. It
could not have been by any imaginary feeling of love that she was enabled to depict with
such power and such truth her very touching “Adieu and recall to Love,” “Farewell to
Affection,” and “Recall to Affection.” It required no ordinary kindling of emotion to
produce “What ails this heart o’ mine,” “The Siller Croun,” “O there
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is not a sharper dart,” and many passages of that highly imaginative poem “To the flower
Love-in-idleness,” as well as of those sentiments of love and regret put into the mouth of