THE VICTIM OF DRINK.

THE EARLY LOST.

THE early lost I mourn

Ah, not the early dead;

The early lost return,

Young hope's fair blossom shed.
Gone up like dust.

Oh deeper than the wail

That sounds above the dead

It is, when hope must fail,

And love is chill'd and dead;
No hope, no trust.

Oh curse most dread and dire,
Oh thing most black and foul;
Slakeless thirst and quenchless fire
That scorcheth heart and soul!
I can but weep.

Oh most insidious foe,

That vampire-like, doth cling,

Draining the blood; yet lo,

Soft fanning with its wing
The victim's sleep!

Oh sad and anxious mind,

Dost think all goodness gone
And nought but ill behind,

That thus thou makest moan
Oh calmly think,

Calm saidst thou? I am calm-
The calm of deep despair;
Say, know'st thou of a balm
To heal (the cure is rare),

That plague sore drink!

The words, the sounds I hear,
The sights that pass me by,

They smite and wound my ear,

And blast

my wakeful eye

By night and day.

Thine are these horrors, drink!
My country's curse and shame;
From them my soul would shrink,
And 'gainst thy power and name
For ever pray.

THE DEMON DRINK.

"I DO well to be angry, even unto death,"
To denounce, to decry with unfaltering breath,
To lift up my voice, cry aloud, and not spare,
A fiend-yea, a legion are with us, beware!

Beware the foul demon, avoid his vile haunts,
For soul-crushing horrors, woes, miseries, and wants.
Still follow his steps and attend in his train,
And his path is bestrewn with the bones of his slain!

His wings are outspread, like a dark thunder cloud O'er thee my lov'd Scotland; the pall and the shroud, And the grave of thy glory thine own hands prepare, While harbouring and serving the demon beware!

Where are thy Sabbaths? Say how are they spent?
Do'st use them as channels whence passion finds vent,
In drinking, blaspheming, in orgies obscene,
In the fields, in the woods, in the filthy shebeen.

Where are thy children? At play on the street;
Romping and shouting the varlets I meet;
Ah, my soul it is sad, and my heart it is pained,
For children neglected and Sabbaths profaned!

Where are thy mothers? where are thy wives?
Do they make it the aim and the end of their lives
To be sober and virtuous, not gading abroad,
But training their children for life and for God!

I do well to be angry; 'tis horror to think
Of mothers possessed by the demon of drink,
Who lay on his altar their all upon earth,

The treasures of childhood, the home, and the hearth.

'Tis sad, on the eve of the Sabbath to hear
The shout of the drunkard-his maudlin cheer,
As out from the shebeen he staggers along,
With oaths and obscenity larding his song!

But sadder to see, and sadder to hear,

A mother-that name should be sacred and dear-
A drunkard, a libel on true womankind;
How chuckles the demon such votaries to find!

"I do well to be angry even unto death;"
A mother, a drunkard, her poisonous breath
Sweeps over her hearth like the deadly simoom,
Leaving want, woe, and shame, desolation and gloom.

COMPARATIVE SLAVERY.

TELL me not of negro slavery,

Of its shackles, stripes, and woesShackles stronger, stripes more cruel, Deeper woe the drunkard knows.

Ah! what fetters adamantine

Bind and hold him in their thrall, Oft the scorpion scourge of horror On his shrinking soul will fall.

Tell me not of buying, selling,

Like the beasts in field or fold, Human beings-lo! the drunkardBody, soul, and heart hath sold.

Sold! is it to plant the cotton,

Hoe the soil, and pick the pod? No; to drink the demon tyrant, Foe to man, accursed of God.

Tell me not the negro mother

Rears her children for the mart, To be torn, when master wills it, From her clinging arms and heart.

We have thousand British mothers Who, in want, neglect, and cold,

See their infant victims pining

To the fiend intemperance sold.