WHEN HOME WE RETURN. Susanna Blamire Alexander Huber Editor Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford
Broad Street Oxford OX1 3BG UK
Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive
Taylor Institution Library St Giles' Oxford OX1 3NA UK info@eighteenthcenturypoetry.org https://www.eighteenthcenturypoetry.org/
Oxford This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Blamire, Susanna, 1747-1794. The Poetical Works of Miss Susanna Blamire “The muse of Cumberland.” Now for the first time collected by Henry Lonsdale, M.D. with a preface, memoir, and notes by Patrick Maxwell, ... Edinburgh John Menzies, 61 Princes Street; R. Tyas, London; D. Robertson, Glasgow; and C. Thurnam, Carlisle. MDCCCXLII. 1842 pp. 193-194.

This e-text is part of the Works section of the Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive (ECPA).

XML created for the Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive (ECPA).

Typography, spelling, capitalization, and punctuation have been cautiously modernized. The source of the text is given and all significant editorial interventions have been recorded in textual notes. This text has been edited to conform to the recommendations found in Level 5 of the Best Practices for TEI in Libraries version 4.0.0.

Library of Congress Name Authority File (LCNAF) text-indent: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; text-align: center; text-align: right; text-align: left; display: inline font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;
WHEN HOME WE RETURN . Air — O say , bonny Lass , will you lie in a barrack ? WHEN home we return , after youth has been spending , And many a slow year has been wasting and ending , We often seem lost in the once well-known places , And sigh to find age has so furrow'd dear faces ; For the rose that has faded the eye still keeps mourning , And weeps every change that it sees on returning . Should we miss but a tree where we us'd to be playing , Or find the wood cut where we saunter'd a-Maying , — If the yew-seat's away , or the ivy's awanting , We hate the fine lawn and the new-fashion'd planting , Each thing call'd improvement seems blacken'd with crimes If it tears up one record of blissful old times . When many a spring had call'd forth the sweet flowers , And many an autumn had painted the bowers , I came to the place where life had its beginning , Taking root with the groves that around me were springing ; When I found them all gone , 'twas like dear friends departed , And I walk'd where they us'd to be half broken hearted ! When distant one bower my fancy still haunted , 'Twas hung round with woodbine my Jessy had planted I ran to the spot , where a weak flower remaining Could just nod its head to approve my complaining , A tear for a dewdrop I hid in its fringes , And sigh'd then to think what one's pleasures unhinges ! But , ah ! what is that to the friends oft estranging , Their manners still more than their looks daily changing ; Where the heart us'd to warm to find civil behaviour , Make us wish we had stay'd from our country for ever , With the sweet days of youth in our fancies still glowing , And the love of old Friends with old Time ever growing !