Poems (Cook)/Song of the Rushlight

by Eliza Cook

SONG OF THE RUSHLIGHT.

Oh! scorn me not as a fameless thing,
Nor turn with contempt from the song I sing.
'Tis true, I am not suffer'd to be
On the ringing board of wassail glee:
My pallid gleam must never fall
In the gay saloon or lordly hall;
But many a tale does the rushlight know
Of secret sorrow and lonely woe.

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.

I am the light that dimly shines
Where the friendless child of Genius pines—
Where the godlike mind is trampled down
By the callous sneer, and freezing frown.
Where Want is playing a demon part,
And sends its iron to the heart,—
Where the soul burns on in the bosom that mourns
Like the incense fire in funeral urns.

I see the hectic fingers fling
The thoughts intense, that flashingly spring;
And my flickering beam illumes the page
That may live in the fame of a future age.
I see the pale brow droop and mope,
Till the breast turns sick with blasted hope—
Till the harsh, cold world has done its worst,
And the goaded spirit has groan'd and burst.

I am the light that's doom'd to share
The meanest lot that man can bear:
I see the scanty portion spread,
Where children struggle for scraps of bread—
Where squalid forms and faces seem
Like phantoms in a hideous dream—
Where the soul may look, with startled awe,
On the work of Poverty's vulture-claw.

Many a lesson the bosom learns
Of hapless grief while the Rushlight burns;
Many a scene unfolds to me
That the heart of mercy would bleed to see.
Then scorn me not as a fameless thing,
Nor turn with contempt from the song I sing;
But smile as ye will, or scorn as ye may,
There's naught but truth to be found in my lay.