Poems (Cook)/Fire

by Eliza Cook

FIRE.

Blandly glowing, richly bright,
Cheering star of social light;
While I gently heap it higher,
How I bless thee, sparkling fire!
Who loves not the kindly rays
Streaming from the temper'd blaze?
Who can sit beneath his hearth
Dead to feeling, stern to mirth?
Who can watch the crackling pile,
And keep his breast all cold the while?

Fire is good, but it must serve:
Keep it thrall'd—for if it swerve
Into freedom's open path,
What shall check its maniac wrath?
Where's the tongue that can proclaim
The fearful work of curbless flame?
Darting wide and shooting high,
It lends a horror to the sky;
It rushes on to waste, to scare;
Arousing terror and despair;
It tells the utmost earth can know,
About the demon scenes below;
And sinks at last, all spent and dead,
Among the ashes it has spread.
Sure the poet is not wrong
To glean a moral from the song.
Listen, youth! nor scorn, nor frown,—
Thou must chain thy Passions down:
Well to serve, but ill to sway,
Like the Fire they must obey.
They are good in subject state,
To strengthen, warm, and animate;
But if once we let them reign,
They sweep with desolating train,
Till they but leave a hated name,
A ruin'd soul, and blacken'd fame.