Pocahontas and Other Poems (New York)/A Name
A NAME.
"Let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad."—Genesis, xi., 4.
Make to thyself a name,
Not with a breath of clay,
Which, like the broken, hollow reed,
Doth sigh itself away;
Not with the fame that vaunts
The tyrant on his throne,
And hurls its stigma on the soul
That God vouchsafes to own.
Make to thyself a name,
Nor such as wealth can weave,
Whose warp is but a thread of gold,
That dazzles to deceive;
Not with the tints of Love
Form out its letters fair,
That scroll within thy hand shall fade
Like him who placed it there.
Make to thyself a name,
Not in the sculptured aisle,
The marble oft betrays its trust,
Like Egypt's lofty pile;
But ask of Him who quell'd
Of death, the victor-strife,
To write it on the blood-bought page
Of everlasting life.