I saw, with seemly waking eyes,
And a strange and strong reality,
My wife in her dying agonies,
And a fiend with a face replete with glee
Bending over her wasted frame,
Calling her, mocking by her name.
Anon he spoke—"Oh, oh," said he,
"A husband drunk as drunk can be!
Bite at the bosom, starvelling young
They father is drunk, thy mother is dead;
Live to be doomed, live to be hung—
A pauper, a felon, but die in no bed."
I saw my eldest born in rags,
A quiet, silent boy was he;
But his was not the soul that drags
Days tainted by life's leprosy.
Proud in his youth with life well spent,
Sad in his hopes to tatters rent,
A bosom bursting with shame's dismay,
Blasting the bud of his promising May.
I saw, and how my soul shook then,
My daughter, (my joy, my pride,
Ere I had turned to a pestilential den
My home and its fireside;)
I saw her, my fair and delicate child—
Yes, once she was delicate and fair,
Meek and lowly, gentle and mild,
And ever with softest speech to spare;
I saw her with front brazen and bold,
Bloated and broken ere she was old;
And looks I saw from her once chaste eyes,
And words I heard from her lips once pure,
Telling abroad her infamy,
And I shrieked with pain beyond endure!
And I saw a younger frame;
My fair hair'd Alfred, he was there;
I remember the time when he nightly came
To my feet, and murmur'd his little prayer!
And Tom, with his face of innocent mirth,
And his voice of cheerful, chirping glee;
And Will, who lit up our evening hearth
With his flashes of infant jollity,
And George, a smiling and gentle boy,
Who lived in a quiet gush of joy;
And they were gaol-birds, with sadden'd faces;
Cursing and railing, without a gleam,
A ray of thought in all their traces!
Trembling I woke,
And trembling spoke,
"Thank God! 'twas but a Drunkard's Dream!"
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