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 .A POEM, 
 
 READ AT THE 
 
 FIRST ANNIVERSARY 
 
 OP 
 
 HOWARD DIVLSIOiV, M. 21, S. OF T. 
 
 NOVEMBER 16, 1866, 
 BY CHARLES W, HILLS, P. W. P. 
 
 WASHINGTON, CO., 1866, 
 Chronicle Print. 
 
ITOTB.— At ameekiag of Howard DlTision. 5o. 21, Sona of Temparane«, 
 held November 22, 1866, the fallowing resolution was adopted : 
 
 Resolved, That the thanks of Howard Division be tendered Brother 
 Charles W. Hills, P. W. P., for the Poem read by him on the occasion of 
 our late Anniversary, and that he be requested to furnish the Division 
 with a copy of the same for publication. 
 
 The undersigned were appointed a Committee to procure the publica- 
 tion of the poem. 
 
 Howard Division, No. 21, S. of T:, Instituted November, 26, 1865, wltli 
 thirty-three charter members, and now numbering six hundred memberg 
 and lady-visitors, meets every Thursday evening, at 7 o'clock, at Unloa 
 Hall, No. 481 Ninth street, between D and E streets. 
 
 WM. P. DREW, 
 
 J. B. JOHNSON, ^ OommlttM. 
 
 GEO. L. VANOB, 
 
I. 
 
 O'er fated Egypt's deserts wide 
 
 God's cloudy pillar hung, 
 His chosen people's course to guide 
 
 The devious wilds among. 
 
 Reposing on the Red Sea's banks, 
 
 From Pharaoh's bondage free, 
 Glad shouts arose from Israel's ranks 
 
 In swelling jubilee. 
 
 Philistia's haughty hosts o'erthrown, 
 With Afehtaroth and gods untrue, 
 
 Old Samuel raised a sculptured stone — 
 " The Lord hath helped us hitherto." 
 
 Here ends our journey of a year ; 
 
 Our brightest hopes surpassed, 
 Here our memorial pile we rear, 
 
 A land-mark of the past. 
 
 Trinmphf^r.t on the wished-for coast 
 
 Wc sound onr jubilee, 
 As Miriam's song from Israel's host 
 
 Swelled o'er the surging sea. 
 
 Strange mem<n'!es, like a rushing flood 
 
 Released, go tbr^ nging by ; 
 They th^'HI the nerver. and stir the blood, 
 Like a sudden shot in a silent wood, 
 
 Resounding sharp and high. 
 
 Tb'M<^hts ri-^e of nights of gloom profound, 
 
 TVhen a faithful few would meet; 
 While the winery wind, with a sullen sound, 
 Swept mournfully his chilling round 
 Through each deserted street. 
 
When over a dark and ashen sky 
 The wind-driven vapors swept, 
 And the pattering rain, like a sobbing sigh. 
 As the moaning wind went hurrying by, 
 Its ceaseless music kept. 
 
 The gorgeous Spendthrift of the Year, 
 
 Old Autumn, cloud-bedight, 
 Storm-guarded, held his revel here 
 
 One year ago to-uight. 
 
 The murky clouds were piled on high, 
 Like mountain-cliffs against the sky. 
 And seemed, in wild and wrathful play, 
 To mar the hope of coming day. 
 
 As friends to right, as foes to wrong, 
 In numbers weak, in purpose strong, 
 We met that night, and now we find 
 Six hundred more our ranks have joined. 
 
 Success on energy attends ; 
 
 Sloth checks each grand reform. 
 The faithless are fair-weather friends, 
 
 The faithful dare the storm. 
 
 II. 
 
 When battling myriads trod the coast 
 
 Of sacred Palestine, 
 The Cross was to the Christian host 
 
 A grand, all-conquering sign : 
 The Moslem legions quailed and fled 
 Before that symbol strange and dread. 
 
 Where swept the thunder-gust of war 
 
 Like desert-born typhoon, 
 Flushed swift-descending cimeter, 
 
 Waved Islam's crescent moon. 
 High flamed the Cross, and seemed to be 
 The Avatar of Destiny. 
 
Grandly before our ranks has moved 
 Unchecked a sign of power; 
 
 Our name a talisman has proved 
 In every trying hour ; 
 
 The synonym of noble fame, 
 
 Proudly we bear a Howard's name. 
 
 No Ifiurels deck the brows of those 
 
 Who lead our battle's van; 
 No trophies rich from conquered foes 
 
 Repay the toil for man. 
 In Right's great conflict heroes move 
 Unsung of men, but known above. 
 
 In mythic days the brave in wars 
 
 Upon the changeless ^ky 
 Were fixed amid the fadeless stars, 
 
 For immortality, 
 In apotheosis sublime, 
 In constellated pantom'me. 
 
 The moral hero yet will find, 
 
 Though toiling all unseen, 
 His noble actions deep-enshrined 
 
 Within the hearts of men; 
 Better than blackened corpses hid 
 In heaven-aspiring pyramid. 
 
 Age-shaken towers that tottering stand 
 
 Or lie disjointedly. 
 Half-buried in the drifting sand, 
 
 Attest too mournfully 
 How powerless are such piles to shed 
 True glory on the builder's head. 
 
 Defaced, unread, sand-buried lies 
 Each lofty cenotaph; 
 
6 . 
 
 The patient worker, when he dies, 
 
 Requires no epitaph ; 
 When life'« gieat harvest-field he leaves, 
 With joy he brings his gathered sheaves 
 
 A quaint old proverb the Arabs tell 
 
 Evermore, like a midnight cry, 
 Is haunting my dreams -a nightmare spell- 
 It rings in my ears like a tolling bell, 
 
 '• Tae reaiembiaiice of youth is a sigh-" 
 
 in. 
 
 Tuwciing -dbuve the glacier^^ cold, 
 
 , . or ragged Switzerland, 
 
 In mora s uacertain light behold 
 
 A spectral figure stand ! 
 driai, shadowy, Titan-like — its forai 
 Misl shrouded, throned amid the storm. 
 
 Uprising, on the startled air 
 
 The ghostly shape inirudes. 
 And towers, like palm in desert bare, 
 
 Mid nature's solitudes, 
 A statel}^, cloud-wrapped sentinel, 
 Mute warder o'er the land of Tell. 
 
 Awe-struck the early traveller views, 
 
 Projecting crags between. 
 His every motion reproduced 
 
 UpoQ that mighty screen; 
 A giant show — an acted dream— 
 A grand, colossal pantomime I 
 
 Upou the future's curtained wall 
 
 Man's, every act shall live. 
 Pictures to please, or to appal, 
 
 Alike must all survive ; 
 The impress, made, the figure traced, 
 It lives, and cannot be effaced. 
 
7. 
 
 No quaiiii- device the actor screens. 
 
 No charigH'at mortal's nod, 
 But ixu'ie.] hands adjust the tcenes. 
 
 The audience, a God! 
 The curtain, dread futurity ! 
 
 The period, all etoi nity ! 
 
 IV. 
 
 Park misery broods in awe and dread 
 
 On sin cur.-od man's estate, 
 And ruin stalks with fatal tread 
 
 O'er hciirth-stones desolate: 
 Intemperance cariies want and fright 
 To many a wretched home to-night. 
 
 On cloud-veiled 6inai, thander-riven, 
 
 Before Jehovah's nod, 
 To waiting Israel were given 
 
 The oracles of God ; 
 Bui modern Solons overawe 
 God's grand prohibitory law. 
 
 The wretch who vends hell's poison here, 
 
 Go wander where he will, 
 On land, on sea, must plainly hear, 
 Forever thundering in his ear, 
 
 The 1nw_"Thnu s},nlt not kill!" 
 
 The wailing wind will sound a dirge, 
 
 The storm a victim's moan, 
 And in the boom of every surge, 
 
 He'll hear a dying groan. 
 
 In awful retribution just. 
 
 From Heaven why rushes not 
 
 A vengeful' fire to lick the dust 
 From each polluted spot 
 
 Where, nightly, Satan's agents true 
 
 Their master's murderous work pursue ? 
 
O, God ! who, prayer-restrained, 
 
 Spared Moab's pious sire, 
 When on doomed Sodom rained 
 
 Heaven's all-devouring fire, 
 Spare Thou, nor blot from earth again, 
 The modern Cities of the Plain I 
 
 V. ■ 
 Sin-hardened weaklings villify 
 
 Our cause, and on it cast, 
 Like weak, time-serving Shimei 
 
 When grief-bowed David passed, 
 Jeers, scoffs, and sneers — we can forgive, 
 
 The truth can never die, 
 And still the Sons of Temperance live 
 
 To bless humanity. 
 
 Its work-stained banners borne aloft, 
 
 Still first in order moves 
 Old Number One, whose shelter oft 
 
 To many a wanderer proves, 
 In time of doubt and sorest need, 
 A Good Samaritan indeed. 
 
 No bard, though skilled in numbers due, 
 And thoughts and words sublime. 
 
 Could make the name of Number Two 
 Adorn a modern rhyme : 
 
 But firm in faith, in numbers few, 
 
 Its streagth approves its members true. 
 
 A host of workers, rescued, free, 
 
 Triumphantly attest 
 In doing good that NumberlThree 
 
 Is Equal with the best. 
 
 Excelsior'k record will remain ; 
 Still wrongs demand redress, 
 
9 
 
 And rising, it may ^^et attain 
 To higher usefulness. 
 
 May old Potomac combat wrong 
 While rolls Potomac's tide along; 
 
 To fainting ones may Twenty- Three 
 A Fountain in the desert be. 
 
 Far-reaching in the peaceful vale, 
 Unmoved by floods of wrong, 
 
 A cable tried that cannot fail, 
 An anchor sure and strong, 
 
 May Hope remain, the cheering bow 
 Of promise, spanning gulfs of woe. 
 
 On battle-scarred Virginia's soil 
 Mount Vernon gathers fame; 
 
 And proudly may those workers toil 
 Who bear a Lincoln's name. 
 
 Far in the east — Judea's realm, 
 
 A star rose on the sight, 
 And, resting over Bethlehem, 
 
 Dispelled a moral night : 
 But here, reversing nature's law, 
 
 Shining amid the mist, 
 The parting clouds reveal a star 
 
 Ascending in the west. 
 Its cheering light the gloom pervades, 
 
 No storms its brightness mar ; 
 May Time grow old ere sinks or fades 
 
 Our glorious Western Star! 
 
 And Western Mission, latest born, 
 With str.jng, unyieldiug will. 
 
 And patient zeal, is struggling on, 
 Its mission t'> fulfill. 
 
 When battle joins with vice and sin 
 
 May triumph greet our Benjamin. 
 
10 
 
 Yl. 
 
 As, tracking ^^estward with the sun, 
 
 Sweep scourges pestilent 
 From steaming- pools and marshes dank 
 
 In torrid Orient; 
 So sweeps, unchecked, a wasting plague. 
 
 Far worise to sinful man 
 Than dire diseases jungle-bred 
 
 In fated Hmdostan. 
 
 An old tradition, strange and vague, 
 
 A fearful tale of woe, 
 Of the time when the desolating plague 
 
 Raged in London long ago, 
 Obtrudes upon my memory, 
 
 As fevers come and go. 
 
 Death stalked unchecked, with noiseless tread. 
 
 Through street and silent hall, 
 And a nameless terror, a shuddering dread, 
 
 Descended, a dismal pall, 
 Over perishing hundreds leprous and red 
 
 With the curse of the primal fall 
 
 The vials of God's just wrath 
 Were emptied above them at last, 
 
 And full upon their path 
 
 Down swept, like a rushing blast, 
 
 The gathered doom of years, 
 Wnile fitfully hurrying past 
 
 Trooped phantoms of formless fears. 
 
 Men quiverin^i: died, and stranger hands 
 
 To the charnel-houses bore 
 Each festering corpse ; grim horror stands 
 
 By each grave forever more. 
 Like a fog-wrapped tower on the dreary sands 
 
 Of a dreaded, storm-swept shore. 
 
11 
 
 Undisturbed bj the dash of a single oar, 
 
 Each hovel and palace past, 
 With a surging rush and a gurgling roar, 
 
 Flowed the turbid river fast. 
 Glassed with slimy ooze and tainted gore 
 
 Dropped from the death-carts trundling past. 
 
 Unscared lurks the thief in the grass-grown street, 
 
 In an awful solitude, 
 And turret and dome, unentered, secrete 
 
 The vulture's filthy brood, 
 And lazily flapping their shadowy wings 
 
 They fly in search of food. 
 
 Thank God ! through the foggy, pestilent air 
 
 Resounds, in quavering swell. 
 From an old cathedral's turret square, 
 
 The toll of a single bell. 
 Oh! heaven, how sweetly that melody rare 
 
 On the pallid listeners fell I 
 
 Like the morning sun glad hope broke then 
 
 Through the all-pervading gloom, 
 And proclaimed the lifting once again 
 
 Of the overshadowing doom ; 
 That men could mourn for their fellow-men 
 And follow them to the tomb. 
 
 O, bell, on the age-battled turrets of time, 
 
 Ring the knell of woes long borne, 
 Commingling your tones, in chorus sublime, 
 
 With the rending of fetters long worn, 
 And proclaiming abroad, in exultant chime, 
 
 That men may cease to mourn I 
 
 In hope we await the era of right 
 By visioned prophet foretold, 
 
LIBRARY OF CC)NGR||| 
 
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 12 
 
 When legalized wrong and arrogant might 
 Shall fall ; end when none shall behold 
 
 To the Devil, clad like an angel of light, 
 Men sell their souls for gold. 
 
 0, speed the long-expected day 
 When, like wicked, Godless states, 
 
 Dark evil and wrong shall })ass away; 
 When over each city's gates 
 
 Inscribed, undimmed, shall shine for aye, 
 "Behold, the plague abates!'^ 
 
 When the wretch who heeds not misery's cry. 
 
 Shall feel that our God is just, 
 That the high and the low by the Deity 
 
 Were framed from a common dust; 
 When a soulless faith and apathy 
 
 Shall yield to a higher trust! 
 
I TRRftRY OF CONGRESS 
 
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