Poetry

By Lydia Huntley Sigourney 1791–1865

Morn on her rosy couch awoke,

Enchantment led the hour,

And mirth and music drank the dews

That freshen’d Beauty’s flower,

Then from her bower of deep delight,

I heard a young girl sing,

‘Oh, speak no ill of poetry,

For ’tis a holy thing.’

The Sun in noon-day heat rose high,

And on the heaving breast,

I saw a weary pilgrim toil

Unpitied and unblest,

Yet still in trembling measures flow’d

Forth from a broken string,

‘Oh, speak no ill of poetry,

For ’tis a holy thing.’

’Twas night, and Death the curtains drew,

’Mid agony severe,

While there a willing spirit went

Home to a glorious sphere,

Yet still it sigh’d, even when was spread

The waiting Angel’s wing,

‘Oh, speak no ill of poetry,

For ’tis a holy thing.’

Source: She Wields a Pen: American Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century (University of Iowa Press, 1997)

Biography

Born in Norwich, Connecticut, poet Lydia Huntley Sigourney—known as the “Sweet Singer of Hartford”—was the only daughter of a gardener. She attended private school with the assistance of her father’s employer, and founded a Hartford school for girls in 1814. At this school, without any specialized training, Sigourney taught a deaf student, Alice Cogswell, to read and write in English. Cogswell would later be the first student . . .

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