Philadelphia Courier, Token, Gem, Gift, Mr. Whitaker’s Journal, Southern Literary Messenger, and Orion Magazine.
This gifted young lady died at Charleston, September 23, 1849. In 1851 a volume of her poems was published, with an interesting biographical memoir by the Rev. Dr. Gilman, from which this brief notice has been compiled. Her prose writings have never been collected.
EXTRACT FROM A LETTER.
You ask how I have been occupied, and why I have written so little for the pages of the “Rose.” Well, I must tell you. I have forsworn poetry, and excepting a “Farewell” to it, which I wanted to make very pathetic, have not written a verse for a long while. As I tell you, this “Farewell to Poesy” was a thing I designed should be the last and best, and accordingly one dark wintry after noon, I wrapped myself closely in cloak and boa, and slipping away from the children, who are always in readiness for a walk, I proceeded to a very lonely and romantic spot at some distance from Homestead, hoping that in this deep solitude I might strike the ‘harp of solemn sound,’ so that it should give out music worthy of so high a theme. But in vain the wind moaned in most doleful cadence, in vain the waterfall sang its tireless song, in vain the owl in an adjacent wood croaked ever and anon; I could not attune my spirit aright. My rhymes jingled readily enough, but I could not win “the spark of heaven to tremble down the wire,” and after being seated for a full hour over a wet log, which produced, as you may suppose, a most uncommon rheumatism, I was startled by *****, who came to inquire of my poetical success. With great animation I read my several verses, each ending with these emphatic lines,
I vow that I no more will be
A captive to sweet poesy;
which lines, to my surprise, produced at each repetition a most unrestrained burst of laughter, and were at last set to a most ridiculous tune, which was sung during our long walk homeward, with the most provoking perseverance, till I too was compelled to laugh at my own hard-earned composition. Now you see I have let you
