Oh say, was not this eye more bright?
Were not these lips more wont to smile?
Methinks that then my heart was light,
And I a fearless, joyous child
And thou didst mark me gay and wild,
My careless, reckless laugh of mirth:
The simple pleasures of a child,
The holiday of man on earth.
Then thou hast seen me in that hour,
When every nerve of life was new,
When pleasures fann'd youth's infant flower,
And Hope her witcheries round it threw.
That hour is fading; it has fled;
And I am left in darkness now,
A wanderer tow'rds a lowly bed,
The grave, that home of all below.
Young poets often affect a melancholy strain, and none more frequently
put on a sad and sentimental mood in verse than those who are as happy
as an utter want of feeling for any body but themselves can make them.
But in these verses the feeling was sincere and ominous. Miss Davidson
recovered from her illness at Albany so far only as to be able to
perform the journey back to Plattsburgh, under her poor mother's care.
"The hectic flush of her cheek told but too plainly that a fatal disease
had fastened upon her constitution, and must ere long inevitably
triumph." She however dreaded something worse than death, and while
confined to her bed, wrote these unfinished lines, the last that were
ever traced by her indefatigable hand, expressing her fear of madness.
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