The sweet young spring walks over the earth,
It flushes and glows on moor and lea;
The birds are singing in careless mirth--
The brook flows cheerily on to the sea.
And I know that the flowers are blooming now,
Over my beautiful darling's brow;
Blooming and blowing in perfume now
Over my poor lost darling's brow.
The breath of the passionate summer turns
The green on the hills to a deeper dye.
The wind from the southland blows and burns;
The sun grows red in the brazen sky;
And I know that the long, dark grasses wave
Over my beautiful darling's grave;
Rise and fall, and lift and wave
Over my darling's narrow grave.
The days flow on and the summer dies
And glorious autumn takes the crown,
And toward the south the robin flies,
And the grass on the hill grows dull and brown,
And the leaves, all gold, and purple and red
Drift over my precious darling's 'bed.
Drift and flutter, all gold and red,
Over my darling's lonely bed.
The winter comes with its chilling snow
And wraps the world in a spotless shroud
And cold from the north the wild wind blows,
And the tempest rages fierce and loud.
It shrieks, and sobs, and sighs, and weeps,
O'er the mound where my darling sleeps;
In pity it sobs, and sighs, and weeps
Over the ground where my lost one sleeps.
He was so young, and fair, and brave,
The pride of my bosom, my heart's best joy.
And he lieth now in a drunkard's grave--
My beautiful darling--my only boy.
But down in my heart of hearts I know
He has gone where the tempter never can go
To heaven his soul has gone, I know,
Where the souls of his tempters never can go.
They charmed him into his licensed hell,
They gave him rum, and his eye grew wild;
And lower and lower, down he fell,
Till they made a fiend of my precious child.
May the curses of God fall on the soul
Who gave my darling the poison bowl;
Aye! curses dark and deep on the soul
Who tempted my darling to lift the bowl.
"THE SAME OLD STRAIN."
Each day that I live I am persuaded anew,
A maxim I long have believed in, is true.
Each day I grow firmer in this, my belief,
Strong drink causes half the world's trouble and grief.
Do I take up a paper, I read of a fight,
Tom's fist in his eye deprived Jamie of sight;
Both fellows were drinking before it began,
And drink made a brute of a peaceable man.
Next, Jones kills his wife, such an awful affair!
She was throttled, and pounded, and drawn by the hair;
Cause--"Jones had been drinking--not in his sane mind."
(Few men _are_ who tip up the bottle, I find.)
Then, a man is assaulted and dirked in the dark
By two "jolly boys" who are out on a "lark;"
They have ever been peaceable boys--but, you see,
They drank, and "were hardly themselves" on this spree.
Just over the street lives the man who is known
To be honest and kind, when he lets drink alone;
But whenever he quaffs from the full, flowing bowl,
He is more like a beast than a man with a soul.
Next door lives the husband who frets at his wife;
With his temper and spleen, she's no peace of her life.
Well I know--do you? he muddles his head
Every night with hot toddy, ere going to bed.
"We temperance croakers harp on the same strain?"
Well--the cause is one story again and again;
Fights--tragedy--troubles--all stirred up by drink,
Good reason we have to keep _harping_, I think.
We harp to these words; strong drink drives the knife
To the heart of a friend, and deprives him of life;
It turns sober boys into rowdies and knaves--
It steals from the household to fill up the graves.
Who loves it the most first falls by its art;
It first wins its victim--then strikes to the heart.
But one thing is certain--it never was known
To do a man harm if he let it alone.