All her short pieces were composed with equal rapidity; and sometimes she wished that she had two pair of hands to record as fast as her muse dictated. These she composed wherever she chanced to be when the spirit of poesy came over her. In the midst of her family, blind and deaf to all around her, she held sweet communion with her muse. But when composing her longer poems, as "Amie Khan," or "Chicomicos," she required complete seclusion. She retired to her own room, closed the blinds, and placed her AEolian harp in the window. Her mother gives this graphic description: "I entered her room,--she was sitting with scarcely light enough to discern the characters she was tracing; her harp was in the window, touched by a breeze just sufficient to rouse the spirit of harmony; her comb had fallen on the floor, and her long, dark ringlets hung in rich profusion over her neck and shoulders; her cheek glowed with animation; her lips were half unclosed; her full, dark eye was radiant with the light of genius, and beaming with sensibility; her head rested on her left hand, while she held her pen in her right. She looked like the inhabitant of another sphere. She was so wholly absorbed that she did not observe my entrance. I looked over her shoulder, and read the following lines:-- 'What heavenly music strikes my ravished ear, So soft, so melancholy, and so clear? And do the tuneful nine then touch the lyre, To fill each bosom with poetic fire? Or does some angel strike the sounding strings, Who caught from echo the wild note he sings? But, ah! another strain! how sweet! how wild! Now, rushing low, 'tis soothing, soft, and mild.'" The noise made by her mother roused Lucretia, who soon afterwards brought her the preceding verses, with the following added to them, being an address to her AEolian harp:-- "And tell me now, ye spirits of the wind, O, tell me where those artless notes to find-- So lofty now, so loud, so sweet, so clear, That even angels might delighted hear. But hark! those notes again majestic rise, As though some spirit, banished from the skies, Had hither fled to charm AEolus wild, And teach him other music, sweet and mild. Then hither fly, sweet mourner of the air, Then hither fly, and to my harp repair; At twilight chant the melancholy lay, And charm the sorrows of thy soul away." Her parents indulged her in the utmost latitude in her reading. History, profane and sacred, novels, poetry, and other works of imagination, by turns occupied her. Before she was twelve, she had read the English poets. Dramatic works possessed a great charm for her, and her devotion to Shakspeare is expressed in the following verses, written in her fifteenth year:--