THE DEATH OF THE DRUNKARD 
 
(This, the earliest poem ever written by me, has 
perished save the following fragment.  Its date is 1886 
or 1887.) 
I 
 
TERROR, and darkness, and horrid despair ! 
Agony painted upon the once fair 
Brow of the man who refused to give up 
The love of the wine-filled, the o’erflowing cup. 
“ Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging.” 
No wine in death is his torment assuaging. 
 
II 
 
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Just what the parson had told me when young : 
Just what the people in chapel have sung : 
“ Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging.” 
 
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Desunt cetera. 
 
(It should be noted that this fragment is of a wildly 
revolutionary tendency.  It made him the Ibsen of a 
school where a parson and a chapel were considered 
with the rest of the non-Plymouth-Brethren world as so 
many devils let loose from hell.—R. P. L.) 
 
 
 
I