University of Virginia Library

LINES READ BEFORE THE PRINCETON, (BUREAU COUNTY,) WASHINGTONIAN SOCIETY.

When first on Eden's verdant sod
The parents of our lineage trod;
When all around was strange and new,
That met the pleased and wondering view,
Say, what should crown their simple board
But garden fruits, a smiling hoard?
What beverage could the patriarch bring,
But water bubbling from the spring?
Their wants so simple and so few,
Were all to nature's dictates true;
And years sped joyously along,
Made glad with labor, health and song.
No alchymist, as yet, had found,
In his dark cave beneath the ground,
The liquid fire, that friend of strife.
Which eats the silken threads of life.
Man felt no rheums nor chronic pain,
No burning fever scorched his brain;
But centuries of years rolled on
Before the sands of life were gone.
But when upon the mountain side
The waters of the flood were dried,
When from the ark our sites went forth,
And spread abroad upon the earth
And planted the clinging vine
And pressed its purple fruit for wine,
How soon the years of man had run
From nine long centuries down to one;
How thick were sown along his path,
Sorrow and crime, disease and death.
Ye who look forward to the hour
When death shall smite with certain power;
When your free spirits shall arise
To the bright chambers of the skies,
What will the waiting angels bring
That hasten to your welcoming?
Think ye that wine or rum are there?
No! water limpid as the air.
Water of life and that alone,
Which gushes from the eternal throne.
The same by him of Patmos seen,
Sparkling in heaven's all glorious sheen;
That radiant, bright and blessed river,
Whose crystal wave flows on forever.
Then let us all our steps retrace,
Regenerate our wasted race;
Temperance shall lengthen out the span
Allotted here on earth to man.
Bring in the coming years to view,
The reverent age the patriarchs knew;
Give to the glad Millenium birth,
And make a paradise on earth.