Frances [Fanny] Sargent Locke Osgood (18 Jun 1811 – 12 May 1850 | Boston MA – New York NY) poet, author, letter correspondent.

Oh Spirit of Poetry, leave me not yet! The Lutins are abroad in thousand forms of night. The fan,

a lover’s fantasy: Dainty spirit, lend unto me each lyric line. Sooth her in sorrow and brighten her

smile. While at the bar of Judge Conscience, stood Reason arraign’d, the Jury impannell’d – the

prisoner chain’d – the hole in the lock she could not undo. Breathe but one dear little murmur;

thine eyes shall tell me the rest. On mission pure, from realms divine, Young Love was sent to

Virtue’s shrine, with sportive Beauty by the way. Spring keeps her promises – why not you? Ah!

woman still must veil the shrine where feeling feeds the fire divine. Come listen, while in

careless rhyme, golden rules you may hoard with Time. When the child was buried, a little canoe

with a sail to it, laden with bread-fruit and cocoas, was sent off from the shore with a fair wind, to

bear the spirit of the dead away from the land of the living. Her sail is set — and she glides away!

Osgood, Frances S. Poems. New York: Clark, Austin & Co., 1850. https://archive.org/details/poems00osgo/page/n8/mode/1up?view=theater