LUCIFER’S LABORATORY.

SURROUNDED by bottles and flagons and bowls, To the music of shrieks from perishing souls, Holding a lurid and snake-wreathed flask, The Devil pursued his terrible task. Hatred and lust, and all the horde Of hell’s worst vices into it he poured, And when it was brimming with fever and sin, He took the bottle and labelled it GIN. Another flask in his hand he raised And the flame of his breath round the crystal blazed, As he filled it with murder, suicide, theft, Orphans fatherless, wives bereft, Doses of poverty, doses of crime, For every region, for every clime, And the noisiest imps round his throne were dumb As he took the bottle and labelled it RUM. And then a barrel he seized to fill With grief and affliction, pain and ill; Stupor, the brain of mankind to dim; Coma, to palsy the heart and limb; Draughts, the senses to cloud and clog Till God’s image became but a senseless log, And the devil’s lips were twined in a leer As he took that barrel and labelled it BEER. The fiends laughed loud in rapturous mirth As he scattered his mixtures around the earth. And whiteskin, and blackskin, and redskin quaffed, North, South, East, West, the poisonous draught. And the demon yell as each toper fell, Voiced the chorus, “Another recruit for hell! Hurrah for the triumph of Satan and sin, Brought about by the conquest of whiskey and gin!”