Gone

Abstract

This poem from the children’s magazine Onward in 1869 presents a grim picture, and shows that young people were not sheltered from the sometimes dramatic messages of temperance propaganda.

GONE.

By T.R.T

YES, they are gone :
Our earliest friend,
With whom we beguil’d
Many long hours,
By the warm fireside.
They have passed,
Drink on their memory
A shadow hath cast.

Yes, they are gone :
In youth they died.
In infancy taught
The liquor to imbibe.
Their days were short,
Their life’s now o’er,
They have pass’d away
To drink no more.

Yes, they are gone,
They could not agree ;
Drink burst the bonds
Which bound in unity.
They are scatter’d now.
One is no more,
The rest now wander
On a foreign shore.

Yes, they are gone,
Drink curs’d their home ;
And wide on the earth
They now do roam.
Help then, Christian,
To gather them in,
For surely drinking’s
A wide-spread sin.