"Now his songs are dark and gloomy, broken are his symphonies, And the bright thought halts and falters, glides along, then stops and flees; Now he craves but for my kisses, all his hopes are wrapped in me, Thus, a wreck, he rhymes unreason 'midst his ragged company. "I have lured the pale religieux from his height of snowy dreams By the sweet Circean measures of my strange, soul-haunting themes-- Strangled love and filial duty by the witchery of my charms-- Quenched the genius of a million, passion-drowned within my arms. "From his love of virgin beauty, I have led the trusting swain Till he sank in my morasses--till he sought her not again; I have watched her fading, drooping like a rose in chilling dawn, Waiting for love's warmth that came not, ever paling, sinking wan. "And unto her heart's slow breaking as she guessed her lover's plight, I have whispered to her, dreaming of him in the restless night: 'Maiden, of thy lover dreaming, practising thy girlish arts, I could teach thee subtle secrets, philter give that love imparts. "'But my joy is in the breaking, not the mending of a heart, So I'll keep thy truant lover by my wiles from thee apart; I will drag him down to ruin, into gulfs where misery dwells; Where I lead he, too, shall follow, by my power that compels. "'When a wreck he reels through passion, for my charms I'll take his health, Goad him down to sin's abysses, steal from him his scanty wealth. Know, O maiden, this remember, never more shall he be free; He, thy lover whom thou dream'st of, yet shall kill for love of me.' "Thus fair womankind I torture, through that love for man they bear, Till from cheeks the roses vanish, till gray-tinged is raven hair; While my poison, slowly filtering, stains the fonts of purity, And they sink by man polluted, tainted to obscurity. "I am Drink, the fiend remorseless, all that's mortal is my prey; These mad lovers 'neath me reeling are my playthings of to-day. Each to-morrow brings new victims, each to-day a grave I fill; He who loves me truest, fondest, with a demon's joy I kill." So hell's acolyte satanic, where the tinkling glasses gleamed, Told the story of his triumphs to that other Master Fiend; While the laughter, wild, discordant, broke amidst the streaming lights, In the nearing midnight hour on that ribald night of nights. Told how when, in prisons lonely, men, repenting all too late, Wake in frightful desolation, cursing at their woeful fate; Wake to awful understanding of hands red with bloody stains, Wake to hear his voice exultant crying in their clearing brains-- "Mortal, who in drunken frenzy consummated thy red deed, Now awakened and in terror, now, oh, now I take my meed-- Satiate my hate with gloating, as remorse shrieks in thy brain, When thy bloodshot eyes protruding read thy doom in that red stain!"