Oracles

THE DEATH OF THE DRUNKARD (This, the earliest poem ever written by me, has perished save the following fragment. Its date is 1886 or 1887.) I TERROR, and darkness, and horrid despair ! Agony painted upon the once fair Brow of the man who refused to give up The love of the wine-filled, the o’erflowing cup. “ Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging.” No wine in death is his torment assuaging. II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Just what the parson had told me when young : Just what the people in chapel have sung : “ Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging.” . . . . . . . Desunt cetera. (It should be noted that this fragment is of a wildly revolutionary tendency. It made him the Ibsen of a school where a parson and a chapel were considered with the rest of the non-Plymouth-Brethren world as so many devils let loose from hell.—R. P. L.) I