 | The anti-slavery poems of John Pierpont |  |
62
‘I WOULD NOT LIVE ALWAYS.’
I would not live always; 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.
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 always, 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!—
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 always to toil as a slave:
O no, let me rest, though I rest in my grave;
For there, from their troubling, the wicked shall cease,
And, free from his master, the slave be at peace.
O no, let me rest, though I rest in my grave;
For there, from their troubling, the wicked shall cease,
And, free from his master, the slave be at peace.
1843.
| The anti-slavery poems of John Pierpont | |