Page:Pocahontas, and Other Poems.djvu/181

 

Gathered around my table, shared my cup,
And worn my raiment — yea, far more than this,
Been sheltered in my bosom, but to turn
And lift the heel against me, and cast out
My bleeding heart in morsels to the world,
Like catering cannibals.
⁠Take me not back
To those imprisoning 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 thy 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,