Page:Poems Sigourney, 1834.pdf/216

                                        Take me not back
To those imprisoned curtains, broidered thick
With pains, beneath whose sleepless canopy
I've pined away so long. The purchased care,
The practised sympathy, the fawning tone
Of him who on my vesture casteth lots,
The weariness, the secret measuring
How long I have to live, the guise of grief
So coarsely worn—I would not longer brook
Such torturing ministry. Let me die here,
'Tis but a little while. Let me die here.
Have patience, Nature, with thy feeble son,
So soon to be forgot, and from thine arms,
Thou gentle mother, from thy true embrace,
Let my freed spirit pass.
                                          Alas! how vain
The wreath that Fame would bind around our tomb—
The winds shall waste it, and the worms destroy,
While from its home of bliss the disrobed soul
Looks not upon its greenness, nor deplores
Its withering loss. Ye who have toiled to earn
The fickle praise of far posterity,
Come, weigh it at the grave's brink, here with me,
If ye can weigh a dream.
                                           Hail, holy stars!
Heaven's stainless watchers o'er a world of woe,
Look down once more upon me. When again,
In solemn night's dark regency, ye ope
Your searching eyes, me shall ye not behold,
Among the living. Let me join the song,
With which ye sweep along your glorious way;
Teach me your hymn of praise. What have I said?
I will not learn of you, for ye shall fall.
Lo! with swift wing I mount above your sphere,
To see the Invisible, to know the Unknown,
To love the Uncreated!—Earth, farewell!