Page:Poems Cook.djvu/36

I am found in the closely-curtain'd room,
Where a stillness reigns that breathes of the tomb—
Where the breaking heart, and heavy eye,
Are waiting to see a loved one die—
Where the doting child with noiseless tread
Steals warily to the mother's bed;
To mark if the faint and struggling breath
Is fluttering still in the grasp of death.

The panting has ceased; the cheek is chill;
And the ear of the child bends closer still.
It rests on the lips, but listens in vain;
For those lips have done with life and pain:
I am wildly snatch'd, and held above
The precious wreck of hope and love:
The work is seal'd, for my glimmering ray
Shows a glazing eye, and stiffening clay.

I am the light that quivering flits
In the joyless home where the fond wife sits;
Waiting the one that flies his hearth,
For the gambler's dice and drunkard's mirth.
Long hath she kept her wearying watch,
Now bitterly weeping, now breathless to catch
The welcome sound of a footstep near,
Till she weeps again, as it dies on her ear.

Her restless gaze, as the night wears late,
Is anxiously thrown on the dial-plate;
And a sob responds to the echoing sound,
That tells the hand hath gone its round:
She mournfully trims my slender wick,
As she sees me fading and wasting quick;
And many a time has my spark expired,
And left her, still the weeping and tired.

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