Gone, gone, forever passed and gone!
Year of the circling hours, how soon
Thy swiftly fading scenes have flown,
Still on for aye, and ever on.
The winter winds on pinions chill
Down sweeping from each giant hill,
Are chaunting, as they onward rush,
The old year's funeral requiem,
And naked branch and withered bush,
With creak and sigh are answering them.
The streams that murmur in the vale,
Edged round with winter’s closing pale,
Still faint and fainter tell the tale
Of Time’s destroying march,—
And the lone Pee-dee on his limb,
Singing companionless his hymn,
Beneath the dark green arch.
Seems in his loneliness to mourn
The flying hours, the warblers gone,
And Summer’s foliage seared and torn
By ruffian winds away,
As o’er the wood his notes are borne,
Through all the live long day.
Sighing for Nature’s faded wreaths,
From all her thousand scenes among,
The wind in mournful cadence breathes,
And every valley hath a tongue,
And every lofty tree and strong,
And wild rock old and grey;
And wood, and hill, and mountain-height,
Trod down in Time’s resistless flight
Confess his ruthless sway.
The rolling years come one by one,
Smile, frown, and face, and are no more,
In blind pursuance hurrying on
To Lethe’s silent shore
And now another year is laid,
With all its unsubstantial glory,
Among the long forgotten dead,
In Ruin’s vast requietory.
Behold the withered foliage torn,
And flying on the winds of heaven,—
The fields of all their beauty shorn,
Their glory to destruction given.
And see, the strong unbending oak,
That mock’d the winnowing blast in scorn,
And dated the lightning’s fiery stroke,—
Where had its pride and grandeur gone?
Rock-seated root, and trunk, and limb,
Are rent before the might of Him
Whose ministers are fire and hail,
And thunder-burst, and dashing rain,
Tempest and earthquake, sweeping gale,
And desolating hurricane.
But wasting Time, his deeper trace
Hath left, upon our changing race,
His seal is every where,—
On sunken eye, and furrowed cheek,
On trembling limbs, and sinews weak,
Pale brown and whitening hair.
Old age, as to its couch at rest,
When day hath faded from the West,
Hath tottered through the gathering gloom,
And sunken to the quest tomb,
Beneath a load of care;
Beauty hath faded in its bloom,
And gone, the good and fair.
And, O! that with departing time,
Had fled the trace of woe and crime!
What secret tears have wet the eye
Of sorrow, in that buried year,
What groans, ascending, have on high
Entered Jehovah’s listening ear,—
What blood, by wrong and hatred spilt,—
What unrequited ills have gone
To call down on the sons of guilt
The vengeance of an Holy One,—
Ah! who can tell? The veil that shrouds
From eyes of man, man’s utmost woe,—
More dark than midnight thunder-clouds,
When not a star-lamp gives it glow,
Eternity can rend alone,
And make the curdling horrors known.
The unveiled secrets of that day,
When the entombed of earth shall rise
With every refuge swept away,
Such crimes and burning agonies,
And nameless sorrows, could reveal
As well might stir a heart of steel!
In impious pride that mocks the name
Of virtue and the law of God,
Leagued with all woe, and guilt, and shame,
The red-armed foe hath been abroad.
Hope, drooping like the trampled flower,
Hath shrunk before her blasting power;
Heaven-cradled Joy, and Peace, and Love,
Fair angels from the realms above,
Rich Plenty, with her golden horn,
And Beauty, blooming as the morn,
Flee trembling from her withering glance,
And shriek, “The fiend! INTEMPERANCE!”
Her myriads to the gates of hell
The foe hath led in triumph on,
And myriads more reserved, to swell
The hosts of the Destroying one.
And thousands in their mad career
Have staggered downward to the grave,
And o’er them the departed year
Hath rolled its broken wave.
And still they come! Her thousands more,
Unmindful of the fiery doom,
That sternly threatens them before,
Are reeling o’er the open tomb;
Another year and they must fall
To crown the Spoiler’s carnival.
And see, where burns you Altar’s flame!
There fouler deeds are darkly done
Than ever mocked the blushing sun,
Or stained the tale of human shame
With horrors, that have not a name.
Brother, and son, and grey-haired father,
The once beloved, and good, and fair,
Now sold to sorrow and despair,
Around that smoking Altar gather,
Bringing their all in offering there.
Ah wherefore is that worship given
Whose recompense is woe alone?
Who thus despise the hopes of heaven,
To bow before a demon’s throne?
Intemperance, thine the votaries, thine
The worshippers before that shrine.
Lured to thy ruining embrace,
They crowd around thee, till in chains
They find the Drunkard’s resting place,
The Drunkard’s everlasting pains.
Yet triumph not, for thou shalt know
A quick and fearful overthrow;
Each dying year is hurrying on
The hour that seals thy coming doom,
And when a few more years have gone
To veil the past in deeper gloom,
Their flood shall break upon thy tomb.
The day of victory is dawning
Upon the arms of Truth and Right,
And nations bless the hallowed morning
That bursts upon their moral night,
In long and serried ranks advance
With banners in the breezes flung,
The embattled hosts of Temperance,
And as the joyous streamers dance
Above them, in the blue expanse,
Their battle-cry is rung;
And from their glowing lines along
Even now comes up the victor song,
While fast before their cohorts strong
The dark and guarded temples fall
Where bowed the haggard band,
In fetters to King Alcohol
And kissed his bloody hand.
Old Ireland‘s dark shebeens send out
The rescued mllions to the field,
And loud their thrilling battle shout
Upon the quivering air is pealed.
Intemperance, and her horrid band
Of ills, that spoiled that glorious land,
From every strong and ancient hold
Shrink back before the uplifted hand
Of Heaven-anointed THEOBOLD,
And Joy and Virtue sweetly smile
Once more on Erin’s “Emerald Isle”
Up from the thousand altars, where
The Spoiler pours her burning bowl,
And binds in fetters of despair
The trembling, and deluded soul.
Amid the foul and reeking dens
That stand in all our own bright glens,
There comes a strong and glorious band,
Delivered from her iron hand;
The chosen of the Lord to smite
The forehead of the insidious foe,
And trample down her sceptred might
In fatal overthrow.
To them shall it be given, to pour
Truth's fiery arrows fast upon
The Spoiler, till she bows before
The fierceness of their rushing on.
And theirs shall he forevermore
The blessing of the rescued one.
Where'er one human heart is bleeding,
In sympathy with human woe,—
Where'er one single voice is pleading
For Truth and Virtue, crushed and low,-
There shall their names be heard in praise,
Their deeds be given to after days.
The sorrowing mother, sadly weeping
At midnight, o'er her fireless hearth,
For him her painful vigils keeping,
Whose coming is in brutal wrath,
Shall teach her lisping babes to bless
The memory of their faithfulness.
On, heroes! in your labors on,
Untiring for a brother's weal;
Ye bear the name of Washington,
Gird on his daring and his zeal.
Ye battle in a holier strife,
With Truth's bright sword unstained
By the fell waste of human life,
That marked the warrior's reaping knife,
Till blood like water rained.
On, though the flood of ruin rolls
In deep and threat'ning waves before ye;
Forward, with firm untrembling souls,
The surge shall ne'er break o'er ye.
Still onward, in His strength, whose hand
Ploughed, in the Red Sea's rolling wave,
A path-way for his chosen band,
For Pharaoh's host an ocean grave,—
That arm can turn the fiery tide,
And overwhelm the Spoiler's pride.
George Shepard Burleigh
