Page:Memoir and poems of Phillis Wheatley, a native African and a slave.djvu/113

"Ah! take this wretched life you deign to sure;
"With them I too am carried to the grave:
"Rejoice triumphant, my victorious foe,
"But show the cause from whence your triumphs flow.
"Though I unhappy mourn these children slain,
"Yet greater numbers to my lot remain."
She ceased, the bow-string twanged with awful sound.
Which struck with terror all the assembly round,
Except the queen, who stood unmoved alone,
By her distresses more presumptuous grown.
Near the pale corses stood their sisters fair,
In sable vestures and dishevelled hair;
One, while she draws the fatal shaft away,
Faints, falls, and sickens in the light of day.
To soothe her mother, lo! another flies,
And blames the fury of the inclement skies,
And, while her words a filial pity show,
Struck dumb—indignant seeks the shades below.
Now from the fatal place, another flies,
Falls in her flight, and languishes and dies.
Another on her sister drops in death;
A fifth in trembling terror yields her breath;
While the sixth seeks some gloomy cave in vain,
Struck with the rest, and mingled with the slain.
One only daughter lives, and she the least;
The queen close clasped the daughter to her breast.
"Ye heavenly powers, ah! spare me one," she cried.
"Ah! spare me one," the vocal hills replied
In vain she begs, the Fates her suit deny;
In her embrace she sees her daughter die.