Author talk:Mary Diana Dods

"Dying Boy"

"My Transmogrifications" mentions that, aged 14:

I wrote a long string of verses, called the “Dying Boy,” in which I lamented my early doom, expressed my resignation, and took a tender and pathetic farewell of the trees, and the moon, and the flowers. It brought the tears into my own eyes to read it—(I have since learned it had the same effect upon others, but from a very opposite emotion)—I sent them to one of the most pitiful magazines, where they were (God knows why) inserted.

Assuming this is accurate, it would have been published around 1804. I haven't been able to find any poems under that title so far. One possibility is it could have been published under another title; "Inscription on a Summer-House" in Monthly Literary Recreations, is one poem from around that time (1807) that mentions trees, the moon, flowers, and seems to portend the author's death. --Yodin^T 00:50, 18 April 2024 (UTC)