THE GROG-SELLER'S DREAM.
By Editor
[IN one of our exchanges we find a long piece of poetry under this head, recounting a dream-land visit of Satan to the grog-seller. The latter was much afraid that the devil had come to carry him away, but assurance was given to him in the words following. —ED.] "Ho, ho!" said Nick, "'tis a welcome cold
You give to a friend so true and old,
Who has been for years in your employ,
Running about like an errand boy.
But we'll not fall out; for I plainly see
(And it's very strange), you're afraid of me.
Do you think I've come for you? Never fear,
You can't be spared for a long while here! "There are hearts to break, there are souls to win
From the ways of peace to the paths of sin;
There are homes to be rendered desolate;
There is trusting love to be turned to hate;
There are hands that murder must crimson red;
There are hopes to crush; there is blight to be shed
Over the young and pure and fair,
Till their lives are crushed by the fiend Despair. "This is the work you have done so well,
Cursing the earth and peopling hell,
Quenching the light on the inner shrine
Of the human soul till you make it mine!
Want and sorrow, disease and shame,
And crime that even I shudder to name,
Dance and howl in their hellish glee,
Around the spirits you've marked for me! "Oh, selling of grog is a good device
To make a hell of paradise!
Wherever may roll that fiery flood,
It is swollen with tears, it is stained with blood,
And the voice that was heard erewhile in prayer,
With its muttered curses stirs the air,
And the hand that shielded the wife from ill,
In its drunken wrath is raised to kill. "Hold on your course! You are filling up
With wine of the wrath of God your cup;
And the fiends exult in their homes below
As you deepen the pangs of human woe!
Long will it be, if I have my way,
Ere the night of death shall close your day;
For, to pamper your lust for the glittering pelf,
You rival in mischief the devil himself!"