Groggeries

                                 I.
Down with the groggeries, down!
   Crush them for evermore!
No longer let their dark walls frown—
   Their fiery torrents pour:
Roll on them like the thunder-gust,
And dash their chambers to the dust.

                                 II.
There, deeds that mock the day,
   With fearless front are done;
The slayer crouches there, to slay
   The poor unwary one;
And beggared wretches lingering there
Are robbed of all they have and are.

                                 III.
Whom hath he spared, who lurks
   Within the spoiler’s den—
The man-fiend who untrembling works
   The overthrow of men?
Ah! none—for, with unerring aim,
Have sped his arrows, barb’d with flame.

                                 IV.
Brother! thine own right hand
   The fiend hath torn away:
Him who was wont by then to stand
   In every evil day;
The robber lured him to his cell,
Slew him, and dragged his soul to hell.

                                 V.
Father! Where is thy son?
   Behold you haggard form,
Stripped by the God-abandoned one,
   And cowering in the storm;
‘Tis his who once was all thy joy,
Thine own beloved, thine only boy.

                                 VI.
Son! How the monster mocks
   Thy woes, no tongue can name;
He trod thy father’s thin, gray locks
   Down to the dust in shame,
And now upon thy soul and limb
Would bind the chain that fettered him.

                                 VII.
Widow!—sad weeper—thou
   And all thy starving ones,
Have built the robber’s dens, and now
   He fattens on your groans;
He cannot pity you who gave
Your loved one to the drunkard’s grave.

                                 VIII.
Brother, and sire, and son,
   Widow, and orphan boy,
Ye all have known the cruel one—
   The mighty to destroy—
Then on! and in the name of God
Tread down his temples to the sod.

                                 IX.
In Truth and Virtue strong,
   On to the moral strife,
To stay the robber-arm of Wrong—
   The waste of human life:
On! till from all our hills and glens
Are swept the Spoiler’s reeking dens.