Lucretia Maria Davidson

Lucretia Maria Davidson Poems

Lucretia Maria Davidson Biography

Lucretia Maria Davidson (September 27, 1808 – August 27, 1825) was an American poet of the early 19th century. She was born in Plattsburgh, New York on September 27, 1808. Her father, Oliver Davidson, was a physician, and her mother, Margaret Miller, was an author. She was sent at the age of four to Plattsburg Academy, where she learned to read, later developing an interest in such authors as Oliver Goldsmith and William Shakespeare. She learned to write at age seven. Davidson was an extremely precocious child, and she wrote her first known poem, Epitaph on a Robin, at the age of nine. Davidson died at Plattsburgh on August 27, 1825, at the age of 16 years and 11 months of tuberculosis, then known as consumption, although it has been speculated that her condition may have been linked to anorexia nervosa. Davidson wrote prolifically in her short life, and her surviving poems, of various lengths, number 278. Davidson was praised, with varying levels of enthusiasm, by such notable figures as Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Southey, Marceline Desbordes-Valmore and Catharine Maria Sedgwick. Sedgwick wrote a biographical sketch which was included with Davidson's Poetical Remains, and Desbordes-Valmore wrote an ode to her. Southey's influential, romanticizing 1829 study of her, which compared Davidson to Thomas Chatterton and Henry Kirke White, greatly enhanced her reputation. Southey also remarked upon her personal beauty: "In person she was exceedingly beautiful. Her forehead was high, open, and fair as infancy; her eyes large, dark, and of that soft beaming expression which shews the soul in the glance." Poe was critical of Southey's role in the creation of the romantic 'myth' of Davidson, noting the distinction in quality between her 'poetic soul' and the actual quality of her output. Davidson's sister, Margaret Miller Davidson, was also a noted and published poet; she too died of consumption in her teens and was praised posthumously. Their brother, Levi P. Davidson, was a lieutenant in the US army.)

The Best Poem Of Lucretia Maria Davidson

The Yellow Fever

(Written in her sixteenth year.)

The sky is pure, the clouds are light,
The moonbeams glitter cold and bright;
O'er the wide landscape breathes no sigh;
The sea reflects the star-gemm'd sky,
And every beam of Heav'n's broad brow
Glows brightly on the world below.
But ah! the wing of death is spread;
I hear the midnight murd'rers tread; —
I hear the Plague that walks at night,
I mark its pestilential blight;
I feel its hot and with'ring breath,
It is the messenger of death! —
And can a scene so pure and fair
Slumber beneath a baleful air?
And can the stealing form of death
Here wither with its blighting breath?
Yes; and the slumb'rer feels its power
At midnight's dark and silent hour;
He feels the wild fire thro' his brain;
He wakes; his frame is rack'd with pain;
His eye half closed; his lip is dark;
The sword of death hath done his work;
That sallow cheek, that fever'd lip,
That eye which burns but cannot sleep,
That black parch'd tongue, that raging brain,
All mark the monarch's baleful reign!

Oh! for one pure, one balmy breath,
To cool the sufferer's brow in death;
Oh! for one wand'ring breeze of Heav'n;
Oh that one moment's rest were giv'n!
'T is past; — and hush'd the victim's prayer;
The spirit was — but is not there!

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