Page:Pocahontas, and Other Poems.djvu/181

Rh 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,