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