days afterward, while holding the infant in her lap, she wrote the following lines:

Sweet babe! I cannot hope that thou 'lt be freed
From woes, to all since earliest time decreed;
But may'st thou be with resignation bless'd,
To bear each evil howsoe'er distress'd.
May Hope her anchor lend amid the storm,
And o'er the tempest rear her angel form;
May sweet Benevolence, whose words are peace,
To the rude whirlwind softly whisper-cease!
And may Religion, Heaven's own darling child,
Teach thee at human cares and griefs to smile;
Teach thee to look beyond that world of wo,
To Heaven's high fount whence mercies ever flow.

And when this vale of years is safely pass'd,
When death's dark curtain shuts the scene at last,
May thy freed spirit leave this earthly sod,
And fly to seek the bosom of thy God.

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,
And darkness fills the arch of heaven;

When not a murmur, not a sound

To Fancy's sportive ear is given;
When the broad orb of heaven is bright,
And looks around with golden eye;
When Nature, soften'd by her light,
Seems calmly, solemnly to lie;

Then, when our thoughts are raised above
This world, and all this world can give:
O, sister, sing the song I love,

And tears of gratitude receive.
The song which thrills my bosom's core,
And hovering, trembles, half-afraid;
O, sister, sing the song once more
Which ne'er for mortal ear was made.
'T were almost sacrilege to sing

Those notes amid the glare of day;
Notes borne by angels' purest wing,

And wafted by their breath away.
When sleeping in my grass-grown bed,
Shouldst thou still linger here above,
Wilt thou not kneel beside my head,
And, sister, sing the song I love?

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:
Let me gaze for a moment, that, ere I die,

I may read thee, maiden, a prophecy.
That brow may beam in glory awhile;

That cheek may bloom, and that lip may smile:
That full, dark eye may brightly beam

In life's gay morn, in hope's young dream;
But clouds shall darken that brow of snow,
And sorrow blight thy bosom's glow.

I know by that spirit so haughty and high,

I know by that brightly-flashing eye,
That, maiden, there's that within thy breast,
Which hath mark'd thee out for a soul unbless'd:
The strife of love with pride shall wring
Thy youthful bosom's tenderest string;
And the cup of sorrow, mingled for thee,
Shall be drain'd to the dregs in agony.
Yes, maiden, yes, I read in thine eye

A dark, and a doubtful prophecy.

Thou shalt love, and that love shall be thy curse;
Thou wilt need no heavier, thou shalt feel no worse.

I see the cloud and the tempest near;
The voice of the troubled tide I hear;
The torrent of sorrow, the sea of grief,
The rushing waves of a wretched life;
Thy bosom's bark on the surge I see,

And, maiden, thy loved one is there with thee.
Not a star in the heavens, not a light on the wave!
Maiden, I've gazed on thine early grave.
When I am cold, and the hand of Death
Hath crown'd my brow with an icy wreath;
When the dew hangs damp on this motionless lip;
When this eye is closed in its long, last sleep,
Then, maiden, pause, when thy heart beats high,
And think on my last sad prophecy.

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,
in an inland town of Canada. She remained here
until 1833, when she had a severe attack of scarlet
fever, and on her slow recovery it was determined
to go again to New York. Her residence in the❘
city was protracted until the summer heat became
oppressive, and she expressed her yearnings for
the banks of the Saranac, in the following lines,
which are probably equal to any ever written by
so young an author:

I would fly from the city, would fly from its care,
To my own native plants and my flowerets so fair,
To the cool grassy shade and the rivulet bright,
Which reflects the pale moon in its bosom of light;
Again would I view the old cottage so dear,
Where I sported a babe, without sorrow or fear;
I would leave this great city, so brilliant and gay,
For a peep at my home on this fair summer day.

I have friends whom I love, and would leave with regret,
But the love of my home, O! 't is tenderer yet;
There a sister reposes unconscious in death,

'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,
Or smooth the gray locks to my fond heart so dear,
How quickly would vanish each trace of a tear.
Attentive I listen to pleasure's gay call,

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,
Accept these lines, unworthy though they be,
Faint echoes from thy fount of song divine,
By thee inspired, and dedicate to thee!
The following lines addressed to her mother, a few
days before her death, were the last she ever wrote:
O, mother, would the power were mine
To wake the strain thou lovest to hear,
And breathe each trembling new-born thought
Within thy fondly-listening ear,

As when in days of health and glee,
My hopes and fancies wander'd free.
But, mother, now a shade hath pass'd
Athwart my brightest visions here;
A cloud of darkest gloom hath wrapp'd
The remnant of my brief career;
No song, no echo can I win,
The sparkling fount hath dried within.
The torch of earthly hope burns dim,
And fancy spreads her wings no more,
And O, how vain and trivial seem

The pleasures that I prized before;
My soul, with trembling steps and slow,
Is struggling on through doubt and strife;
O, may it prove, as time rolls on,

The pathway to eternal life!
Then when my cares and fears are o'er,
I'll sing thee as in "days of yore."

I said that Hope had pass'd from earth,
'Twas but to fold her wings in heaven,
To whisper of the soul's new birth,

Of sinners saved and sins forgiven;
When mine are wash'd in tears away,
Then shall my spirit swell my lay.
When God shall guide my soul above,
By the soft chords of heavenly love-
When the vain cares of earth depart,
And tuneful voices swell my heart-
Then shall each word, each note I raise,
Burst forth in pealing hymns of praise,
And all not offer'd at His shrine,
Dear mother, I will place on thine.

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,
Nor worthless pomp of homage vain
Stain it with hypocritic tear;
For I will die as I did live,
Nor take the boon I cannot give.

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;
Where man can boast that he has trod
On him that was "the scourge of God."
But ye the mountain-stream shall turn,
And lay its secret channel bare,
And hollow, for your sovereign's urn,
A resting-place forever there:
Then bid its everlasting springs
Flow back upon the king of kings;
And never be the secret said,
Until the deep give up his dead.

My gold and silver ye shall fling
Back to the clods that gave them birth;
The captured crowns of many a king,
The ransom of a conquer'd earth:
For, e'en though dead, will I control
The trophies of the capitol.

But when beneath the mountain-tide
Ye've laid your monarch down to rot,
Ye shall not rear upon its side

Pillar or mound to mark the spot;
For long enough the world has shook
Beneath the terrors of my look;
And now that I have run my race,

The astonish'd realms shall rest a space.

My course was like a river deep,
And from the northern hills I burst,
Across the world in wrath to sweep,

And where I went the spot was cursed,
Nor blade of grass again was seen
Where ALARIC and his hosts had been.

See how their haughty barriers fail
Beneath the terrors of the Goth,
Their iron-breasted legions quail

Before my ruthless sabaoth,
And low the queen of empires kneels,
And grovels at my chariot-wheels.
Not for myself did I ascend

In judgment my triumphal car;
"Twas God alone on high did send

The avenging Scythian to the war,
To shake abroad, with iron hand,
The appointed scourge of his command.
With iron hand that scourge I rear'd
O'er guilty king and guilty realm;
Destruction was the ship I steer'd,

And vengeance sat upon the helm,
When, launch'd in fury on the flood,

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;
I quench'd in blood the brightest gem
That glitter'd in their diadem,
And struck a darker, deeper dye
In the purple of their majesty;
And bade my northern banners shine
Upon the conquer'd Palatine.

My course is run, my errand done;
I go to Him from whence I came;
But never yet shall set the sun

Of glory that adorns my name;
And Roman hearts shall long be sick,
When men shall think of ALARIC.

My course is run, my errand done-
But darker ministers of fate,
Impatient, round the eternal throne,

And in the caves of vengeance wait;
And soon mankind shall blench away
Before the name of ATTILA.