O! that you could see the print!!
The Lady Blanch, regardless of all her lovers' fears,
To the Urseline Convent hastens, and long the Abbess hears:
"O Blanch, my child, repent thee of the courtly life ye lead."
Blanch looked on a rose-bud, and little seem'd to heed;
She looked on the rose-bud, she looked round, and thought
On all her heart had whisper'd, and all the Nun had taught.
"I am worshipped by lovers, and brightly shines my fame,
All Christendom resoundeth the noble Blanch's name;
Nor shall I quickly wither like the rose-bud from the tree,
My Queen-like graces shining when my beauty's gone from me.
But when the sculptur'd marble is raised o'er my head,
And the matchless Blanch lies lifeless among the noble dead,
This saintly Lady Abbess has made me justly fear.
It nothing will avail me that I were worshipt here."
I wish they may please you: we in these parts are not a little proud of them.
C. L.
["The little scraps." Professor Knight informed me that the scraps were not written but only copied by Miss Wordsworth. Arthur's Bower ran thus:—
Arthur's bower has broke his band,
He comes riding up the land,
The King of Scots with all his power
Cannot build up Arthur's bower.
"Your brother Richard"—Wordsworth's eldest brother.
"Purchas's Pilgrimage." Samuel Purchas (1575?-1626) was the author of Purchas His Pilgrimage, 1613; Purchas His Pilgrim, 1619; and Hakluytus Posthumus, or Purchas his Pilgrimes, 1625. This last is Purchas's best work, and is probably that which Lamb sent to Grasmere.
Mary Lamb's two poems, her earliest that we know, with the exception of
"Helen," were printed in the Works, 1818.]