THE UNIVERSAL PRAYER AND OTHER POEMS.
We usually leave criticism to the grey-beards, or such as have passed the viginti annorum lucubrationes of reviewing. It kindles so many little heart-burnings and jealousies, that we rejoice it is not part of our duty. To be sure, we sometimes take up a book in real earnest, read it through, and have our say upon its merits; but this is only a gratuitous and occasional freak, just to keep up our oracular consequence. In the present case, we do not feel disposed to exercise this privilege, further than in a very few words—merely to say that Mr. Robert Montgomery has published a volume of Poems under the above title—that the poems are of unequal merit, and that like Virgil, his excellence lies in describing scenes of darkness.
The "Universal Prayer" is a devotional outpouring of a truly poetical soul, with as much new imagery as the subject would admit; and if scriptural poems be estimated in the ratio of scriptural sermons, the merit of the former is of the first order.[2]
From the other poems we have detached the following beautiful specimens:—
CONSUMPTION.
With step as noiseless as the summer air,
Who comes in beautiful decay?—her eyes
Dissolving with a feverish glow of light,
Her nostrils delicately closed, and on
Her cheek a rosy tint, as if the tip
Of Beauty's finger faintly press'd it there,—
Alas! Consumption is her name.
Thou loved and loving one!
From the dark languish of thy liquid eye,
So exquisitely rounded, darts a ray
Of truth, prophetic of thine early doom;
And on thy placid cheek there is a print
Of death,—the beauty of consumption there.
Few note that fatal bloom; for bless'd by all,
Thou movest through thy noiseless sphere, the life,
Of one,—the darling of a thousand hearts.
Yet in the chamber, o'er some graceful task
When delicately bending, oft unseen,
Thy mother marks then with that musing glance
That looks through cunning time, and sees thee stretch'd
A shade of being, shrouded for the tomb.
The Day is come, led gently on by Death;
With pillow'd head all gracefully reclined,
And grape-like curls in languid clusters wreath'd,
Within a cottage room she sits to die;
Where from the window, in a western view,
Majestic ocean rolls.—A summer eve
Shines o'er the earth, and all the glowing air
Stirs faintly, like a pulse; against the shore
The waves unrol them with luxurious joy,
While o'er the midway deep she looks, where like
A sea god glares the everlasting Sun
O'er troops of billows marching in his beam!—
From earth to heaven, from heaven to earth, her eyes
Are lifted, bright with wonder and with awe,
Till through each vein reanimation rolls!
'Tis past; and now her filmy glance is fix'd
Upon the heavens, as though her spirit gazed
On that immortal world, to which 'tis bound:
The sun hath sunk.—her soul hath fled without
A pang, and left her lovely in her death,
And beautiful as an embodied dream.
MORTALITY.
All that we love and feel on Nature's face,
Bear dim relations to our common doom.
The clouds that blush, and die a beamy death,
Or weep themselves away in rain,—the streams
That flow along in dying music,—leaves
That fade, and drop into the frosty arms
Of Winter, there to mingle with dead flowers,—
Are all prophetic of our own decay.
BEAUTY
How oft, as unregarded on a throng
Of lovely creatures, in whose liquid eyes
The heart-warm feelings bathe, I've look'd
With all a Poet's passion, and have wish'd
That years might never pluck their graceful smiles—
How often Death, as with a viewless wand,
Has touch'd the scene, and witch'd it to a tomb!
Where Beauty dwindled to a ghastly wreck,
And spirits of the Future seem'd to cry,—
Thus will it be when Time has wreak'd revenge.
MELANCHOLY.
When mantled with the melancholy glow
Of eve, she wander'd oft: and when the wind,
Like a stray infant down autumnal dales
Roam'd wailingly, she loved to mourn and muse:
To commune with the lonely orphan flowers,
And through sweet Nature's ruin trace her own.
VISION OF HEAVEN.
An empyrean infinitely vast
And irridescent, roof'd with rainbows, whose
Transparent gleams like water-shadows shone,
Before me lay: Beneath this dazzling vault—
I felt, but cannot paint the splendour there!
Glory, beyond the wonder of the heart
To dream, around interminably blazed.
A spread of fields more beautiful than skies
Flush'd with the flowery radiance of the west;
Valleys in greenest glory, deck'd with trees
That trembled music to the ambrosial airs
That chanted round them,—vein'd with glossy streams,
That gush'd, like feelings from a raptured soul:
Such was the scenery;—with garden walks,
Delight of angels and the blest, where flowers
Perennial bloom, and leaping fountains breathe,
Like melted gems, a gleaming mist around!
Here fruits for ever ripe, on radiant boughs,
Droop temptingly; here all that eye and heart
Enrapts, in pure perfection is enjoy'd;
And here o'er flowing paths with agate paved,
Immortal Shapes meander and commune.
While with permissive gaze I glanced the scene,
A whelming tide of rich-toned music roll'd,
Waking delicious echoes, as it wound
From Melody's divinest fount! All heaven
Glow'd bright, as, like a viewless river, swell'd
The deepening music!—Silence came again!
And where I gazed, a shrine of cloudy fire
Flamed redly awful; round it Thunder walk'd,
And from it Lightning look'd out most sublime!
Here throned in unimaginable bliss
And glory, sits The One Eternal Power,
Creator, Lord, and Life of All: Again,
Stillness ethereal reign'd, and forth appear'd
Elysian creatures robed in fleecy light,
Together flocking from celestial haunts,
And mansions of purpureal mould; the Host
Of heaven assembled to adore with harp
And hymn, the First and Last, the Living God;
They knelt,—a universal choir, and glow'd
More beauteous while they breathed the chant divine,
And Hallelujah! Hallelujah! peal'd,
And thrill'd the concave with harmonious joy.
VISION OF HELL.
Apart, upon a throne of living fire
The Fiend was seated; in his eye there shone
The look that dared Omnipotence; the light
Of sateless vengeance, and sublime despair.—
He sat amid a burning world, and saw
Tormented myriads, whose blaspheming shrieks
Were mingled with the howl of hidden floods,
And Acherontine groans; of all the host,
The only dauntless he. As o'er the wild
He glanced, the pride of agony endured
Awoke, and writhed through all his giant frame,
That redden'd, and dilated, like a sun!
Till moved by some remember'd bliss, or joy
Of paradisal hours, or to supply
The cravings of infernal wrath,—he bade
The roar of Hell be hush'd,—and silence was!
He called the cursed,—and they flash'd from cave
And wild—from dungeon and from den they came,
And stood an unimaginable mass
Of spirits, agonized with burning pangs:
In silence stood they, while the Demon gazed
On all, and communed with departed Time,
From whence his vengeance such a harvest reap'd.
BEAUTIFUL INFLUENCES.
Who hath not felt the magic of a voice,—
Its spirit haunt him in romantic hours?
Who hath not heard from Melody's own lips
Sounds that become a music to his mind?—
Music is heaven! and in the festive dome,
When throbs the lyre, as if instinct with life,
And some sweet mouth is full of song,—how soon
A rapture flows from eye to eye, from heart
To heart—while floating from the past, the forms
We love are recreated, and the smile
That lights the cheek is mirror'd on the heart!
So beautiful the influence of sound,
There is a sweetness in the homely chime
Of village bells: I love to hear them roll
Upon the breeze; like voices from the dead,
They seem to hail us from a viewless world.