Hymns And Odes For Temperance Occasions I Poem by John Pierpont

Wake! wake! friends of your kind!
There's a Demon, a Demon, abroad!
Ye'll scent him in every breath of the wind;-
Around him is woe;-Death and Hell are behind!-
The foe of man and of God.
The Prince of the devils is it,
Escaped from the bottomless pit,-
Escaped, in his wrath or his mirth,
To put out the lights of the earth.


Watch! watch!-Creeping by stealth,
Like the serpent through Eden's shades,
The mansions of peace, and of worth, and of wealth,
Assuming the form of 'a spirit of health,'
This 'goblin damned' invades.
He claims,-and his claim is allowed!-
The young, and the fair, and the proud;
He claims, and he brands them as slaves,
And drags them all down to their graves!


Hark! hark! Hear ye the chain,
That is clanking in yonder cell?
The Demon is there with the felon insane;
He is tearing a heart,-he is burning a brain!-
That shriek is a maniac's yell!
That long, heart-rending moan
Is a wife's,-she is sitting alone;
The man, on whose arm she has leaned,
Has left her, to worship the Fiend!


Arm! arm! good men and bold!
'T is a question of life or death;
His banners are floating! beneath are enrolled
Your brothers, your fathers, your children,-all sold,
(Bear witness their tainted breath!)
As victims that soon shall expire
In the flames of unquenchable fire,-
Expire on his altar accursed,
In the fire of unquenchable thirst!
On! on! The fall is decreed


On! on! The fall is decreed
Of the throne of the Evil One.
At his feet shall immortals by hecatombs bleed?
His vassals already cry out to be freed,-
Resolve! and the work is done.
Resolve! and the pits that yawn,
From dewy eve till dawn,
That spirits infernal may rise,
No more shall insult the skies.