LUCRETIA AND MARGARET DAVIDSON. days afterward, while holding the infant in her lap, she wrote the following lines: Sweet babe! I cannot hope that thou 'lt be freed And when this vale of years is safely pass'd, 66 In the summer of 1824 she finished her longest poem, Amir Khan," and in the autumn of the same year was sent to the seminary of Mrs. WILLARD, at Troy, where she remained during the winter. In May, 1825, after spending several weeks at home, she was transferred to a boardingschool at Albany, and here her health, which had before been slightly affected, rapidly declined. In company with her mother, and Mr. Moss KENT, a gentleman of fortune, who had undertaken to defray the costs of her education, she returned to Plattsburgh in July, and died there on the twentyseventh of August, one month before her seventeenth birth-day. She retained, until her death, the purity and simplicity of childhood, and died in the confident hope of a blissful immortality. Soon after her death, her poems and prose writings were published, with a memoir by Mr. S. F. B. MORSE, of New York, and an elaborate biography of her life and character has since been written by Miss C. M. SEDGWICK, the author of "Hope Leslie," etc. The following verses are among the most perfect she produced. They were addressed to her sister, Mrs. TOWNSEND, in her fifteenth year: When evening spreads her shades around, When not a murmur, not a sound To Fancy's sportive ear is given; Then, when our thoughts are raised above And tears of gratitude receive. Those notes amid the glare of day; And wafted by their breath away. 435 In her sixteenth year she wrote three "prophecies," of which the following is one: Let me gaze awhile on that marble brow, On that full, dark eye, on that cheek's warm glow: I may read thee, maiden, a prophecy. That cheek may bloom, and that lip may smile: In life's gay morn, in hope's young dream; I know by that spirit so haughty and high, I know by that brightly-flashing eye, A dark, and a doubtful prophecy. Thou shalt love, and that love shall be thy curse; I see the cloud and the tempest near; And, maiden, thy loved one is there with thee. MARGARET DAVIDSON, at the time of the death of LUCRETIA, was not quite two years old. The event made a deep and lasting impression on her mind. She loved, when but three years old, to sit on a cushion at her mother's feet, listening to anecdotes of her sister's life, and details of the events which preceded her death, and would often exclaim, while her face beamed with mingled emotions, "O, I will try to fill her place-teach me to be like her!" She needed little teaching. In intelligence, and in literary progress, she surpassed LUCRETIA. When six years of age, she could read with fluency, and would sit by the bedside of her sick mother, reading with enthusiastic delight, and appropriate emphasis, the poetry of MILTON, COWPER, THOMSON, and other great authors, and marking, with discrimination, the passages with which she was most pleased. Between the sixth and seventh year of her age she entered on a general course of education, studying grammar, geography, history, and rhetoric; but her constitution had already begun to show symptoms of decay, which rendered it expedient to check her application. In her seventh summer she was taken to the Springs of Saratoga, the waters of which seemed to have a beneficial effect, and she afterward accompanied her parents to New York, with which city she was highly delighted. On her return to Plattsburgh, her strength was much increased, and she resumed her studies, with great assiduity. In the autumn of 1830, however, her health began to fail again, and it was thought proper for her and her mother to join Mrs. TOWNSEND, an elder sister, I would fly from the city, would fly from its care, I have friends whom I love, and would leave with regret, 'Twas there she first drew, and there yielded her breath, A father I love is away from me now, O could I but print a sweet kiss on his brow, But my own happy home it is dearer than all. The family soon after became temporary residents of the village of Ballston, near Saratoga; and in the autumn of 1835 of Ruremont, on the Sound, or East River, about four miles from New York. Here they remained, except at short intervals, until the summer of 1837, when they returned to Ballston. In the last two years MARGARET had suffered much from illness herself, and had lost by death her sister Mrs. TOWNSEND, and two brothers; and now her mother became alarmingly ill. As the season advanced, however, health seemed to revisit all the surviving members of the family, and MARGARET was as happy as at any period of her life. Early in 1828, Doctor DAVIDSON took a house in Saratoga, to which he removed on the first of May. Here she had an attack of bleeding from the lungs, but recovered, and when her brothers visited home from New York she returned with them to the city, and remained there several weeks. She reached Saratoga again in July; the bloom had for the last time left her cheeks; and she decayed gradually until the twenty-fifth of November, when her spirit returned to God. She was then but fifteen years and eight months old. Her later poems do not seem to me superior to some written in her eleventh year, and the prose compositions included in the volume of her remains edited by Mr. IRVING, are not better than those of many girls of her age. One of her latest and most perfect pieces is the dedication of a poem entitled "Leonora" to the "Spirit of her Sister Lucretia:" O, thou, so early lost, so long deplored! Pure spirit of my sister, be thou near! And while I touch this hallow'd harp of thine, Bend from the skies, sweet sister, bend and hear! For thee I pour this unaffected lay; To thee these simple numbers all belong : For though thine earthly form has pass'd away, Thy memory still inspires my childish song. Take then this feeble tribute:-'tis thine ownThy fingers sweep my trembling heart-strings o'er, Arouse to harmony each buried tone, And bid its waken'd music sleep no more! Long has thy voice been silent, and thy lyre Hung o'er thy grave, in death's unbroken rest; But when its last sweet tones were borne away One answering echo linger'd in my breast. O thou pure spirit! if thou hoverest near, As when in days of health and glee, The pleasures that I prized before; The pathway to eternal life! I said that Hope had pass'd from earth, Of sinners saved and sins forgiven; VARIOUS AUTHORS. EDWARD EVERETT, LL. D. DIRGE OF ALARIC, THE VISIGOTH, Who stormed and spoiled the city of Rome, and was afterward buried in the channel of the river Busentius, the water of which had been diverted from its course that the body might be interred. WHEN I am dead, no pageant train Shall waste their sorrows at my bier, Ye shall not raise a marble bust Upon the spot where I repose; Ye shall not fawn before my dust, In hollow circumstance of woes; Nor sculptured clay, with lying breath, Insult the clay that moulds beneath. Ye shall not pile, with servile toil, Your monuments upon my breast, Nor yet within the common soil Lay down the wreck of power to rest; My gold and silver ye shall fling But when beneath the mountain-tide Pillar or mound to mark the spot; The astonish'd realms shall rest a space. My course was like a river deep, And where I went the spot was cursed, See how their haughty barriers fail Before my ruthless sabaoth, In judgment my triumphal car; The avenging Scythian to the war, And vengeance sat upon the helm, I plough'd my ways through seas of blood, And, in the stream their hearts had spilt, Wash'd out the long arrears of guilt. Across the everlasting Alp I pour'd the torrent of my powers, And feeble Cæsars shriek'd for help In vain within their seven-hill'd towers; My course is run, my errand done; Of glory that adorns my name; My course is run, my errand done- And in the caves of vengeance wait; |