THE VILLAGE ON THE TAR DEDICATED TO PETTIGREW COUNCIL NO 1. F. OF T.

A DRUNKARD in a distant town lay dying on his bed, There was lack of woman’s gentle touch about his fevered head, But a comrade stood beside him, and wiped the foam away, That bubbled through his frothy lips, to hear what he might say. The poor inebriate faltered, as he caught that comrade’s eye, And he said, “’Tis hard, far, far from home ’mid strangers thus to die. Take a message and a token to my friends away so far, For Louisburg’s my native place, the village on the Tar. “Tell my brothers and companions, should they ever wish to know The story of the fallen, ah! the fallen one so low, That we drank the whole night deeply, and when at last ’twas o’er, Full many a form lay beastly drunk along the barroom floor. And there were ’mid those wretches some who had long served sin, Their bloated features telling well what faithful slaves they’d been; And some were young and had not on the Hell-path entered far— And one was from the village, the village on the Tar. “Tell my mother that her other sons may still some comfort prove, But I, in even childhood, would scorn that mother’s love; And when she called the children to lift up the evening prayer, One form was always missing, there was e’er one vacant chair, For my father was a drunkard, and even as a child He taught my little feet to tread the road to ruin wild; And when he died and left us to dispute about his will, I let them take whate’er they would, but kept my father’s ‘still,’ And with sottish love I used it till its venomed ‘worm’ did gnaw My soul, my mind, my very life, in the village on the Taw.[A] “Tell my sister oft to weep for me with sad and drooping head, When she sees the wine flow freely, that poison ruby red, And to turn her back upon it, with deep and burning shame, For her brother fell before it and disgraced the fam’ly name. And if a drunkard seeks her love, oh! tell her, for my sake, To shun the loathsome creature, as she would a deadly snake, And have the old ‘still’ torn away, its fragments scattered far, For the honor of the village, the village on the Tar. “There’s another, not a sister; in the merry days of old, You’d have known her by the dark blue eye, and hair of wavy gold; Too gentle e’er to chide me, too devoted e’er to hate, She loved me, though oft warned by all to shun the dreaded fate. Tell her the last night of my life—for ere the morning dawn, My body will be tenantless, my clay-chained spirit gone— I dreamed I stood beside her, and in those lovely blue depths saw The merry light that cheered me, in the village on the Taw.[A] “I saw the old Tar hurrying on its bubbles to the sea, As men on life’s waves e’er are swept towards eternity; And the rippling waters mingled with the warbling of the birds, Returned soft silvery echoes to my deep impassioned words; And in those listening ears I poured the sweet tho’ time-worn story, While swimming were those love-lit eyes, in all their tear-pearled glory; And her little hand was closely pressed in mine so brown and braw, Ah! I no more shall meet her, in the village on the Taw.”[A] He ceased to speak, and through his frame there ran a shiver slight, His blood-shot eyes rolled inward and revealed their ghastly white, His swollen tongue protruded, o’er his face a pallor spread, His comrade touched his pulse—’twas still—and he was with the dead. The moon from her pavilion, in the blue-draped fleecy cloud, Through the window o’er the corpse had thrown her pale but ghostly shroud, The same moon that gazing upon that couch of straw. Was bathing in a silver flood the village on the Taw.[A]