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.


There is a something which I dread,
It is a dark, a fearful thing;
It steals along with withering tread.
Or sweeps on wild destruction's wing.

That thought comes o'er me in the hour,
Of grief, of sickness, or of sadness;
'Tis not the dread of death,--'tis more,
It is the dread of madness.

Oh, may these throbbing pulses pause
Forgetful of their feverish course;
May this hot brain, which burning, glows,