rest,
    And all their lives and fortunes spend
    To gain some darling, wished-for end;
    And scarce they see the long-sought prize,
    When each to grasp it fails and dies.” 
    Once more I looked:  in a lonely room,
        On a pallet of straw, were lying
    A mother and child; no friends were near,
        Yet that mother and child were dying. 
    A sigh arose; she looked above,
        And she breathed forth, “I forgive;”
    She kissed her child, threw back her head,
        And the mother ceased to live. 
    The child’s blue eyes were raised to watch
        Its mother’s smile of love;
    She was not there,—­her child she saw
        From her spirit-home above. 
    An hour passed by:  that child had gone
        From earth and all its harms;
    Yet, as in sleep, it nestling lay
        In its dead mother’s arms. 
    I asked my guide, “What doth this mean?”
    He spake not a word, but changed the scene. 
        I stood where the busy throng
    Was hurrying by; all seemed intent,
    As on some weighty mission sent;
    And, as I asked what all this meant,
        A drunkard pass‚d by. 
    He spake,—­I listened; thus spake he: 
    “Rum, thou hast been a curse to me;
    My wife is dead,—­my darling child,
    Who, when ’t was born, so sweetly smiled,
    And seemed to ask, in speechless prayer,
    A father’s love, a father’s care,—­
        He, he, too, now is gone! 
    How can I any longer live? 
    What joy to me can earth now give? 
    I’ve drank full deep from sorrow’s cup,—­
    When shall I drink its last dregs up? 
    When will the last, last pang be felt? 
    When the last blow on me be dealt? 
        Would I had ne’er been born!”
    As thus he spake, a gilded coach
        In splendor pass‚d by;
    And from within a man looked forth,—­
        The drunkard caught his eye. 
    Then, with a wild and frenzied look,
        He, trembling, to it ran;
    He stayed the rich man’s carriage there,
        And said, “Thou art the man! 
    “Yes, thou the man!  You bade me come,
    You took my gold, you gave me rum;
    You bade me in the gutter lie,
    My wife and child you caused to die;
    You took their bread,—­’t was justly theirs;
    You, cunning, laid round me your snares,
    Till I fell in them; then you crushed,
    And robbed me, as my cries you hushed;
    You’ve bound me close in misery’s thrall;
    Now, take a drunkard’s curse and fall!”
    A moment passed, and all was o’er,—­
    He who’d sold rum would sell no more
    And Justice seemed on earth to dwell,
    When by his victim’s hand he fell. 
    Yet, when the trial came, she fled,
    And Law would have the avenger dead. 
    The gilded coach may rattle by,
    Men too may drink, and drunkards