Contents

Poems by Eleanor Cree

Ode
The Adieu to the Village
The Village Church-Yard: a Fragment

Poems by John Davis

Ode to Eleanor
To the Evening Star: At the Tomb of Eleanor
Epitaph for Eleanor

Eleanor Cree's poems

Ode
by Eleanor Cree Davis

Within sweet Stratford's calm retreat,
Repos'd beneath the woodland glade,
I envy not the gaudy great,
Gay dance by night or masquerade.
Far other charms my breast possess,
The joys that from reflection come;
Of him who makes this Cot a Dome!
Then why exchange my calm retreat,
Impervious to unhallow'd feet,
For crowds that ruder passions know,
To me inelegant and low?

Blest with sweet ease, these woods among,
O Muse benignant hear my lyre!
And on thy suppliant's humble song,
Bestow a spark of heav'nly fire.
To thy all-conquering, magic smile,
I owe my bliss; the praise is thine;
For not the studied glance or wile,
Could keep the heart I boast as mine.
Beauty is but a fading rose,
Of ev'ry passing gale the prey;
But sense a longer triumph knows,
Nor will its charms with age decay.

Then Oh! with knowledge feed my soul,
Blest Muse! and teach my verse to roll!

The Adieu to the Village
by Eleanor Cree Davis

Farewell the woodland's calm retreat,
The daisied mead and flow'ry vale,
Where late I roam'd with careless feet,
And carroll'd to the vernal gale.
No Nymph with more true joy was blest
Than I, these roseate bow'rs among;
Where, ev'ry care beguil'd to rest,
The Muse propitious heard my song.
Oh! may she still her smiles bestow,
By far more passing sweet to me,
Than sleep to one opprest with woe,
Or honied-blossom to the bee.
Where'er I find my next retreat,
Whether beneath the hill or dale,
Still may my Cot sweet sounds repeat,
Soft echoing to my artless tale.

The Village Church-Yard: a Fragment.
by Eleanor Cree Davis

When the bright moon her lustre throws around,
To light the precincts of the sacred ground,
Where the rude peasants of the hamlet sleep,
Nor more impell'd with worldly cares to weep,
Be mine the fate to roam the tombs among,
Where gloom inspires with mournful thoughts my song—
Pause o'er the grave in which partakes repose
The frantic lover, freed from all his woes—
Or view the turf that hides the gentle frame
Of her whose smiles could admiration claim.

Perhaps, beneath this spreading cypress' gloom,
The village minstrel finds an early tomb,
Whom vernal flowrets, moist with glist'ning dews,
Weep o'er at night, in concert with the Muse.
In vain he sung the pastimes of the green,
Where comely swains and nymphs were often seen,
Beating at eve, in artless dance, the ground,
To the soft pipe and tabor's jocund sound.
Vainly his eye enthusiastic roll'd,
While the strung lyre his thoughts sublimely told;
For not tradition has preserv'd his song
That once claim'd plaudits from the list'ning throng.

Lo! here the half-effac'd inscription shows
An aged parent finds his last repose,
Whose cottage, where the elm-tree skirts the road,
Rais'd by his hands, in rustic glory stood.
Oft did he share the labours of the day,
Where ears of corn in undulation play;
And when, at eve, he sought his happy home,
The crackling faggot cheer'd the cottage dome;
Nor did the house-wife view, without delight,
Her much-lov'd consort come to bless her sight;
While the soft babes, with prattling tongues, drew near,
His envied kiss, or kind caress to share.

But here the tablet, to the roving sight,
Proclaims the sexton sleeps in darkest night,
Who, thro' twelve years the peasant's grave had made,
Singing, regardless, o'er the uprais'd spade,
Nor heard, depress'd, the bell in solemn toll,
Announce his neighbour's late departed soul,
But to his labour at the summons sped,
To form another hillock o'er the dead.
Yet since on earth all trades alike await
Th' impending shaft of unaverting fate,
This man, who obsequies to thousands gave,
Here in this spot has found himself a grave.

But here, where flowers of hues fantastic grow,
The gentle shepherd, struck by death, lies low,
Who fed his flocks upon the mountain's brow.
Oft did he, at the orient morn, repair
To the sheep cote, where bleetings fill'd the air,
While his rough dog, with measur'd steps, behind,
In hoarse, short barking, bay'd the vernal wind.
No more his feet shall climb the steepy rock,
No more his hands shall shear the tender flock,
No more his lambs along the stubble ground
Crop the sweet plant, or in gay frolic bound;
Nor shall his pipe, with soft, melodious strain,
Breath to the praise of Daphne thro' the plain.

CAETERA DESUNT.

Poems about Eleanor by John Davis

Ode to Eleanor
by John Davis

My harp, on which I late essay'd
To sing of troops in arms array'd,
Recoiling with a quick rebound,
Retur'd a harsh, discordant sound,
But when, O Eleanor, thy charms
Inspir'd my breast with soft alarms,
The chords, responsive to my care,
With gentlest murmurs fill'd the air.

What though tumultuous oceans roll,
To tear thee from my doating soul,
What though unheard I constant sigh,
While the tear trembles in my eye;
Yet hope her consolation gives,
And calmly whispers, "El'nor lives,
"Once more to snatch thee to her breast,
And sweetly sooth thy cares to rest."

To the Evening Star.
At the Tomb of Eleanor
by John Davis

Bright Star of night! slow rising in the west,
That glad'st the seamen bounding on the main,
Thy coming to the world dispenses rest;
Hush'd is each wave, and tranquil now the plain.

Sweet is thy aspect to my longing sight,
When to the tomb I melancholy stray,
Where Eleanor sleeps below in darkest night,
Whose presence once was like the beam of day.

Her voice was pleasant as the words of song;
Her eyes, bright-sparkling, flashed with living fire;
Graceful in dance she join'd the mazy throng,
And wak'd to softest harmony the lyre.

Oh! ye, whose hearts, to some departed friend
Have secret sigh'd, bent down by tender woe,
Here let your breasts with sympathy distend
O'er one, whose tears for others oft would flow.

If souls, no more by earthly bonds controul'd,
Can from the bosom of eternal light,
With piercing eye, this pendant orb behold,
Become immortal by their aetherial flight:

Witness! sweet Seraph! that my mournful lyre
Resounds the tribute of unceasing love:
While with a trembling hope my thoughts aspire,
Once more to meet thee in the realms above!

Epitaph for Eleanor

Near Ganges' stream my right in birth I claim,
At Dacca's walls, and Eleanor my name;
Early devoted to the tuneful throng,
All praise I scorn'd but that I got from song!

Eleanor Cree was born in India in December 1775, daughter of John Cree and his partner Nancy. She was probably brought up later by her step-mother Carolina Matilda, whom John married when Eleanor was seven years old. A year later the family moved to England and eventually settled at Thornhill House in Dorset.

John and Carolina Matilda separated in 1795. In October 1795, at the age of nineteen, Eleanor Cree was living at her father's house, Thornhill House, Dorset. Her father died on 19th November of that year and by 6th January 1796 Eleanor had run off to Gretna Green (the nearest village in Scotland) and married John Davis. They went through a second marriage ceremony on 2 March 1796 at St Edmund's Church, Salisbury, and apparently lived in the small village of Stratford just outside Salisbury, which was John's home village. The marriage was short-lived: less than two years later, in December 1797, Davis was in Bristol where he eventually set sail for New York, apparently having abandoned Eleanor. She died of consumption, or perhaps a broken heart, the following June.

Ode to Eleanor was first published in the European Magazine in January 1799 (pub. Philological Society, London), and later, as one of three poems by Davis, in The Monthly Magazine and American Review, (Volume 2, No. 1, New York, January 1800, p 80). The editor of the latter journal wrote:

The following pieces have merit seldom to be found in the fugitive compositions of contemporary poets. Simplicity and tenderness, in a garb not elaborate or highly finished, are their characteristics. We shall be highly pleased with future communications from the same hand. E (ditor)

John Davis's To the Evening Star was published, with the first two of Eleanor's poems and four others of his own, in Vol. 2, no. 2 (February 1800) of the The Monthly Magazine and American Review. Eleanor's The Village Church-Yard: a Fragment was published in Volume 3 no. 2, (August 1800 p 1 59). It was described as written in England 1797.

Eleanor's poems were attributed simply to "Eleanor", with no surname, and those in Volume 2 were accompanied by a letter from John Davis to the Editor:

To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine.

Sir,
The following Poems form part of a collection that was presented me by their lovely Authoress, whose genius will not confer less celebrity on Dacca, the place of her birth and early residence, than that of Eliza has on Anjengo. I should be gratified by seeing them published in your collection, that Eleanor may be not less known on the banks of Hudson than on those of the Ganges. They were written at the little Village of Stratford, three miles from Salisbury (England). It is painful to relate that this sweet Asiatic fell a victim to a consumption at the age of eighteen, June 19, 1798.
I am, Sir, etc,
John Davis
New-York,
February 20, 1800.

Epitaph for Eleanor was published in The European magazine, Volume 37, in February 1800 (pub. Philological Society, London)

A poem by Davis entitled Elegy to the memory of Ferdinand and Elizabeth (in Travels of Four Year and a Half pp 30-32) bears a remarkable stylistic resemblance to Eleanor's poem above, The Village Church-Yard: a Fragment, which in turn is explicitly an imitation of Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Church-yard. This does arouse suspicion about the authorship of The Village Church-Yard, and perhaps of all three of the poems which Davis has attributed to Eleanor.