How strange it should be that this beautiful snow
     Should fall on a sinner with nowhere to go! 
 How strange it should be when the night comes again,
     If the snow and the ice struck my desperate brain. 
     Fainting,—­freezing,—­dying alone,
 Too wicked for prayer, too weak for a moan,
     To be heard in the streets of the crazy town,
 Gone mad in the joy of the snow coming down;
     To be and to die in my terrible woe,
 With a bed and shroud of the beautiful snow.

 Helpless and foul as the trampled snow
     Sinner, despair not!  Christ stoopeth low
 To rescue the soul that is lost in sin,
     And raise it to life and enjoyment again. 
     Groaning—­bleeding—­dying for thee
 The crucified hung on the cursed tree,
     His accent of mercy fell soft on thine ear,
 “Is there mercy for me?  Will He heed my weak prayer?”
     O, God! in the stream that for sinners did flow,
 Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.

The lips that touch liquor must
never touch mine.

 You are coming to woo me, but not as of yore,
 For I hastened to welcome your ring at the door,
 For I trusted that he, who stood waiting for me then,
 Was the brightest, the noblest, the truest of men.

 Your lips on my own when they printed “Farewell,”
 Had never been soiled by the “Beverage of Hell,”
 But they come to me now with the bacchanal sign,
 And the lips that touch liquor must never touch mine.

 I think of that night, in the garden alone,
 When whispering you told me your heart was my own,
 That your love in the future should faithfully be,
 Unshared by another, kept only for me.

 Oh sweet to my soul is the memory still,
 Of the lips that met mine when they murmured “I will,”
 But now to their pleasure no more I incline,
 For the lips that touch liquor must never touch mine.

 O, John!  How it crushed me when first in your face,
 The pen of the “Rum Fiend” had written “Disgrace,”
 And turned me in silence and tears from that breath,
 All poisoned and foul from the chalice of death.

 It shattered the hopes I had cherished to last,
 It darkened the future and clouded the past,
 It shattered my Idol and ruined the shrine,
 For the lips that touch liquor must never touch mine.

 I loved you, O! dearer than language can tell,
 And you saw it, you proved it, you knew it too well;
 But the man of my love was far other than he
 Who now from the “tap room” came reeling to me.

 In manhood and honor, so noble and right,
 His heart was so true and his genius so bright,
 And his Soul was unstained, unpolluted by wine,
 But the lips that touch liquor must never touch mine.

 You promised reform; but I trusted in vain;
 Your pledge was but made to be broken again,
 And the lover so false to his promises now,
 Will not as a husband be true to his vow.