Strangely you look alike.
Like sisters I have met
You're very hard to tell apart--and yet
The one consoles more gently than a wife;
The other turns and cripples you for life.

Such spirits as these, and many more I summon
From many a poisoned tin,
Or many a bottle falsely labelled "Gin."
Or many a vial pathetic,
Yclept "Synthetic."
Like Dante on his joy-ride Seeing Hell,
Fain would I take you down
Through sulphurous fires and caverns bilious brown
Into the Land of Mystery and Smell
Where Satan steweth
And home-breweth
While thirsty hooch-hounds yell
Their blackest curse,
Or worse:
"Vol-darn our souls with each Vol-blasted dram
That burns our throats and isn't worth a dam!
We drink, yet how we dread it--
Vol-stead it!"
They've said it.

II--_Short Intermission to Change Meter_

In Eighteen Hundred and Sixty-three
A. Lincoln set the darkies free;