There was a faint return of health, followed by a new attack of disease; indeed, the remainder of her brief sojourn in this world presents the usual vicissitudes attendant upon her disease—short intervals of health, which she devoted to study, amid long and dreary periods of illness, which she bore with exemplary patience. It would be painful to follow her through these vicissitudes. We need only note those events and changes which produced a marked effect upon her feelings, and which she has recorded in verse.
In the autumn of 1835, the family removed to “Ruremont,” an old-fashioned country house near New York, on the banks of Long Island Sound. The character and situation of this place seized powerfully on Margaret’s imagination. “The curious structure of this old-fashioned house,” says her mother, “its picturesque appearance, the varied and beautiful grounds around it, called up a thousand poetic images and romantic ideas. A long gallery, a winding staircase, a dark, narrow passage, a trap-door, large apartments with massive doors and heavy iron bolts and bars,—all set her mind teeming with recollections of what she had read, and imagination of old castles, &c.” Perhaps it was under the influence of feelings thus suggested that she composed the following
“STANZAS.
“O for the pinions of a bird,
To bear me far away,
Where songs of other lands are heard,
And other waters play!—
For some aërial car, to fly
On, through the realms of light,