TEMPERANCE.

Southern Cross, Volume 5, Issue 36, 11 December 1897, Page 3

TEMPERANCE.

(Published by arrangement -with the W.C.T.U.) THE DRUHKARrS_D&iIGHTER. These beautiful and touching verses weie written by a young lady in reply to a friend who had called her a monomaniac on the subject of Temperance. Go feel what I hare felt. Go bear what I have borne ; Sink ’neath a blow a father dealt; And the cold, proud world’s scorn ; Then struggle on from year to year, The sole relief the scalding tear. Go weep as I have wept, O’er a loved father’s fall; See every cherished promise swept. Youth’s sweetness turned to gall : Hope’s faded flowers strewed all the way That led me up to woman’s day. Go kneel as I have knelt; Implore, beseech, and pray, Strive the besotted heart to melt, The downward course to stay ; Be cast with bitter curse aside. Thy prayers burlesqued, thy tears defied. Go stand where I have stood, And see the strong man bow With gnashing teeth, lips bathed in blood, And cold and livid brow ; Go catch bis wandering glance, and see There mirrored his soul’s misery. Go, hear what I have heard : i he sobs of sad despair, As ineniOTy*s feeling fount-has stirred. And its rcvealiugs there Have told him what he might have been Had be a drunkard’s fate foreseen. Go to my mother’s side, And her crushed spirit cheer : Thine own deep anguish bide ; Wipe from her cheek the tear . Mark her dimmed eye, her furrowed brow. The grey that streaks her dark hair now ; Her toilworn frame, her trembling limb : And trace the ruin back to him Whose plighted faith in early youth Promised eternal love and truth, But who, foresworn, has yielded up That promise to the deadly cup : And led her down from love and light, From all that made her pathway bright, And chained her there, ’mid want and strife, That lowly thing—a drunkard’s wife : And stamped on childhood s brow so mild, That withering blight : a drunkard’s child. Canadian War Cry.