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

The Salamanca Corpus: The Poetical Works of Miss Susanna Blamire (1842)
And languid Sorrow asks for nothing more;
Sufficient that her eye unseen can weep,
Stream while awake, and flow yet more in sleep.
Tis now twelve years since Solitude first drew
Her closing curtain round my opening view,
Since first I left my once delightful home,
Along with Grief and Solitude to roam.”
Much I expressed my wonder, how a mind
So stor’d as his could herd from all mankind.
“You speak,” he said, “like one whose soul is free,
Slave to no wish, nor chain d to misery.
When ceaseless anguish clouds the summer s sky,
And fairest prospects tarnish in the eye;
When cheerful scenes spread every lure in vain,
And sweet Society but adds to pain;
When weeping Memory incessant brings
The sad reversion of all former things,
And show-like Fancy all her colouring lends,
To gild those views that opened with our friends:
When joyful days through the whole year would run,
And Mirth set out and travel with the sun;
When Youth and Pleasure hand in hand would stray,
And every month was little less than May;
When changing Fortune shifts th’ incessant scene,
And only points to where our joys have been,
Is it a wonder from the world we run,
And all its fleeting empty pageants shun?
“There is a something in a well known view,
That seems to shew our long past pleasures through;
[29]
Sure in the eye a fairy land is found,
When former scenes bring former friends around.
Let but the woods, the rocks, the streams appear,
And every friend you see and think you hear;
Their words, their dress, their every look, you find
Swell to the sight, and burst upon the mind;
Though many a spring has lent the blossom gay,
And many an autumn blown the leaf away,