Page:The poems of Emma Lazarus volume 1.djvu/179

My body dust and ashes shall remain,
Tired heart and brain shall sleep.

" Life has one gate alone,
Obscure, beset with peril and fierce pain.
Large death has many portals to his fane,
Why choose we to make moan?

" Why dwell with worms and clay
When we may soar through air on wings of flame,
Dissolve to small, white dust our perfect frame,
And never know decay?

" A brother s pious hand
The pure, fire-winnowed ashes shall inurn,
And lay them in the orange grove where burn
Globed suns that scent the land.

" The leaf shall be more green,
Even for my dust more snowy-soft the flower,
More juicy-sweet the fruit’s live pulp the bower
Richer that I have been.

" For I would not," he said,
" Tears and the black pall and the wormy grave,
Grief s hideous panoply I would not have
Round me when I am dead."