In this charming poem, published here but nowhere else, Sprague manages to poke gentle fun at a “fair girl” who is so absorbed by a gothic novel that she reads into the night, losing herself in its “clanking fetters, low, mysterious groans, blood-crusted daggers, and uncoffined bones.” But at the same time he values the fantastic break it provides from the humdrum of daily life:

On all she feasts, yet hungers for the last;
Counts what remain, now sighs there are no more,
And now even those half tempted to skip o’er;
At length, the bad all killed, the good all pleased,
Her thirsting curiosity appeased,
She shuts the dear, dear book, that made her weep,
Puts out her light, and turns away to sleep.

Boston Public Library, Research Library