To My Candle (Wolcot)

Thou lone companion of the spectred night! I wake amid thy friendly watchful light, To steal a precious hour from lifeless sleep. Hark, the wild uproar of the winds! and hark! Hell's genius roams the regions of the dark, And swells the thundering horrors of the deep!

From cloud to cloud the pale moon hurrying flies, Now blacken'd, and now flashing through the skies; But all is silence here beneath thy beam. I own I labor for the voice of praise— For who would sink in dull oblivion's stream? Who would not live in songs of distant days?

How slender now, alas! thy thread of fire! Ah! falling—falling—ready to expire! In vain thy struggles; all will soon be o'er. At life thou snatchest with an eager leap; Now round I see thy flame so feeble creep, Faint, lessening, quivering, glimmering, now no more! Thus shall the sons of science sink away, And thus of beauty fade the fairest flower— For where's the giant who to Time shall say, "Destructive tyrant, I arrest thy power!"