I Would Not Live Alway.

100

BY PIERPONT.

I would not live alway; I ask not to stay,
Where I must bear the burden and heat of the day;
Where my body is cut with the lash or the cord,
And a hovel and hunger are all my reward.

I would not live alway, where life is a load,
To the flesh and the spirit: — since there's an abode
For the soul disenthralled, let me breathe my last breath,
And repose in thine arms, my deliverer, Death! —

I would not live alway to toil as a slave;
Oh no, let me rest, thought I rest in my grave;
For there, from their troubling, the wicked shall cease,
And, free from his master, the slave be at peace.