I defied the machinery to make me its slave. Its incessant discords could not drown the music of my thoughts if I would let them fly high enough.

Biography
Larcom was born in Beverly Massachusetts in 1824 the ninth of ten children and died in Boston in 1893. A local literary magazine entitled The Larcom Review is named for her as is the library at the Beverly High School. Larcom penned one of the best accounts of New England childhood of her time A New England Girlhood commonly used as a reference in studying early American childhood.

Lucy Larcom (March 5 1824 – April 17 1893) was an American poet.