Poem by John Pierpont

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.

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!—

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.

1. Death of Charles Follen
2. For the Album of Miss Caroline C---
3. The Temperance Crew
4. Away the Bowl
5. Temperance Song

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