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

The Salamanca Corpus: The Poetical Works of Miss Susanna Blamire (1842)
Than when her eye was call’d the evening star;
On her fair hand she lean’d her drooping head,
And many a tear bedew’d the page she read;
‘Twas Milton s Paradise—the book I knew,
Once my own profile on the leaf I drew,
And wrote beneath this truth-dictated line—
‘With thee conversing I forget all time;’
Her eye I saw ran every feature o’er,
And scann d the line where truth seem’d writ no more;
She shook her head, its meaning well I knew:
“‘Twas even thus, ye once lov’d lines adieu;”
The book she shut—so softly was it clos’d,
As if life’s’joys alone were there repos’d,
“I walk’d around, the crimping grass would say,—
Some heavy foot has brush’d our dews away;
She started up, and, shaking off the tear,
Strove hard to make the pearl-set eye more clear;
But when my form the parting leaves betray’d,
And fuller light around my features play’d,
She grows a statue, wrought by Michael’s art,
A marble figure, with a human heart,
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More pale, more cold, than Medici can seem,
Or all the forms that from the quarry teem.
I bow’d, but spoke not, injur’d as I thought,
And wishing much to show the sense I ought;
I durst not trust th’ impatient tongue to move,
For, ah! I felt it would but talk of love.
I silent stand.” “What art thou, vision, say,
Why dost thou cross a wretched wanderer’s way?
Sure ‘tis the whimsy of a feverish mind
That fancies forms none but itself can find!”
“I bow’d again.” “Oh! speak if thou art he
That once was dear—so very dear to me?”
“Yes, Ethelind, most sure—too sure I’m he
That once was dear, so very dear to thee;
Why has thy heart its fondness all forborne
To swell my sails, and ask my quick return?”
“A married man!—she sharply made reply,”
With much resentment sparkling in her eye,—
“A married man has every right to hear