[These beautiful and touching verses were 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 have 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 his wandering glance, and see
There mirrored his soul's misery. Go, hear what I have heard—
The sobs of sad despair,
As memory's feeling fount has stirred,
And its revealings there
Have told him what he might have been
Had he a drunkard's fate foreseen. Go to my mother's side
And her crushed spirit cheer;
Thine own deep anguish hide,
Wipe from her cheek the tear.
Mark her dimmed eye, her furrowed brow,
The gray that streaks her dark hair now,
Her toil-worn 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.