How could they?—The line but one before is,
"What mutter'd curses trembled through the gloom."
This, then, is purely ridiculous, and we cannot doubt that Mr Montgomery will confess that it is so; but independently of that, he is describing the deathbed of a person who, ex hypothesi, could have no bright hopes, could breathe no sainted murmurs. He might as well, in a description of a negress, have told us that she had no long, smooth, shining, yellow locks—no light-blue eyes—no ruddy and rosy cheeks—nor yet a bosom white as snow. The execution of the picture of the Christian is not much better—it is too much to use, in the sense here given to them, no fewer than three verbs—"pales"—"rolls"—"starts," in four lines.
"The hope Religion pillows on his heart,"
is not a good line, and it is a borrowed one.
"When with a dying hand he waves adieu,"
conveys an unnatural image. Dying men do not act so. Not thus are taken eternal farewells. The motion in the sea-song was more natural—
"She waved adieu, and kiss'd her lily hand."
"Weeps so true," means nothing, nor is it English. The grammar is not good of,
"He pants for where congenial spirits"—