Page:Memoir and poems of Phillis Wheatley, a native African and a slave.djvu/96

90 Still do you weep, still wish for his return?

How cruel thus to weep and thus to mourn!

No more for him the streams of sorrow pour

But haste to join him on the heavenly shore,

On harps of gold to tune immortal lays,

And to your God immortal anthems raise.

Death's domain intent I fix my eyes,

Where human nature in vast ruin lies:

With pensive mind I search the drear abode,

Where the dread conquerer has his spoils bestowed;

There, there the offspring of six thousand years,

In endless numbers to my view appears:

Whole kingdoms in his gloomy den are thrust,

And nations mix with their primeval dust;

Insatiate still, he gluts the ample tomb;

His is the present, his the age to come.

See here a brother, here a sister spread,

And a sweet daughter mingled with the dead.

But, Madam, let your grief be laid aside,

And let the fountain of your tears be dried.