Zinzendorff and Other Poems/Garafilia Mohalby
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.