I would not live alway; 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.
I would not live alway, 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
And repose in thine arms, my deliverer, Death!--
I would not live alway to toil as a slave:
Oh no, let me rest, though I rest in my grave;
For there, from their troubling, the wicked shall
And, free from his master, the slave be at peace.