Zinzendorff and Other Poems/Garafilia Mohalby

4047965Zinzendorff and Other PoemsGarafilia Mohalby1836Lydia Huntley Sigourney


GARAFILIA MOHALBY.

A beautiful Greek girl, adopted by a benevolent family in Boston, who fell a victim to a rapid consumption, at the age of thirteen.


Sweet bird of Ispara! who fled
    From tyrants o'er the tossing sea,
And on the winds of freedom shed
    Thy wildly classic melody,
Love at thy tender warbling woke,
    A foreign land was home to thee,
And stranger accents fondly spoke
    The welcome of paternity.

Why was thy tarrying here so brief,
    Thou sheltered in affection's breast?
Here were no woes to wake thy grief,
    No dangers to disturb thy rest:—
Ah! thou hadst heard of that blest clime
    Where everlasting glories beam,—
Perchance its pageantry sublime
    Had burst upon thy raptured dream.

Thy bright wing spread. Should aught detain
    The prisoner in a cage of clay,
When echoing from the heavenly plain
    Congenial tones forbid delay?
No.—Where no archer's shaft can fly,
    No winter check the tuneful sphere,
Rise wanderer to thy native sky,
    And warble in a Saviour's ear.