Of gamesome deities; or Pan himself,
The simple shepherd's awe-inspiring god!1
Within the soul a faculty abides,
That with interpositions, which would hide
And darken, so can deal, that they become
Contingencies of pomp ; and serve to exalt
Her native brightness. As the ample Moon,
In the deep stillness of a summer eve,
Rising behind a thick and lofty grove,
Burns like an unconsuming fire of life
In the green trees; and, kindling on all sides
Their leafy umbrage, turns the dusky veil
Into a substance glorious as her own,
Yea, with her own incorporated, by power
Capacious and serene; like power abides
In Man's celestial spirit; Virtue thus
Sets forth and magnifies herself; thus feeds
A calm, a beautiful, and silent fire,
From the encumbrances of mortal life,
From error, disappointment,-nay, from guilt;
And sometimes, so relenting Justice wills,
From palpable oppressions of Despair.
JAMES MONTGOMERY.
(1771-1854.)
The impression created on Cowper's mind by the perusal of Johnson's "Lives of the Poets" was one of sadness, that the biographer's delineations should exhibit in genius so much of failing, of meanness, and of littleness. The faults and follies of genius are certainly proverbial; but, in our own century, they seem to have exchanged the relation of rule for that of exception. Mr. Montgomery, author of various poetical works, has enjoyed deserved popularity as a religious poet. He was born at Irvine in Ayrshire, the son of a Moravian preacher, and having been educated at the Moravian School at Fulneck, the young poet preferred trusting to literature rather than entering on the duties of a priest. He became editor of a newspaper in Sheffield, from which he retired in his age, not only with a character unblemished, but respected and beloved as the advocate of all that is generous in principle and sentiment, and the active promoter of every scheme of practical benevolence. After being twice the victim of the mistaken jealousy of his country's laws for alleged political offences, he lived to be the honoured pensioner of his sovereign. He died at Sheffield, where he had long resided, in 1854.
1 The name Pan gives origin to the word panic; Polyaenus. The personal attributes of Pan-horns and hoofs-have originated the popular ideas of the figure of Satan.
Mr. Montgomery's works consist of numerous small pieces, some of which rank among the most popular religious poetry of the country; his larger poems are The Wanderer in Switzerland," "The West Indies," "Greenland," "The World before the Flood," and "The Pelican Island." His writings abound with vigorous, though frequently artificially combined, description: the style is perhaps too diffuse, and we miss in it characteristic and specific features; but the spirit of his poetry is throughout pure and elevating.
HE comes, he comes; the infuriate Geyser springs
Up to the firmament on vapoury wings;
With breathless awe the mounting glory view;
White, whirling clouds his steep ascent pursue.
But, lo, a glimpse !-refulgent to the gale,
He starts all naked through his riven veil ;
A fountain column, terrible and bright,
A living, breathing, moving form of light.
From central earth to heaven's meridian throne,
The mighty apparition towers alone,
Rising, as though for ever he could rise,
Storm, and resume his palace in the skies
All foam, all turbulence, and wrath below;
Around him beams the reconciling bow;
(Signal of peace, whose radiant girdle binds
Till nature's doom-the waters and the winds);
While mist and spray, condensed to sudden dews,
The air illumine with celestial hues,
As if the beauteous sun were raining down
The richest gems of his imperial crown.
In vain the spirit wrestles to break free,
Foot bound to fathomless captivity;
A power unseen, by sympathetic spell,
For ever working,-to his flinty cell,
Recalls him from the rapture of the spheres ;
He yields, collapses, lessens, disappears.
Darkness receives him in her vague abyss,
Around whose verge light froth and bubbles hiss,
While the low murmurs of the refluent tide
Far into subterranean silence glide;
The eye, still gazing down the dread profound,
When the bent ear hath wholly lost the sound.
But is he slain and sepulchred?-Again
The deathless giant sallies from his den,
Scales with recruited strength the ethereal walls,
Struggles afresh for liberty, and falls.
Yes, and for liberty the fight renewed,
By day, by night, undaunted, unsubdued,
He shall maintain, till Iceland's solid base
Fail, and the mountains vanish from its face.1
WINTER LIGHTNING.
The flash at midnight !-'twas a light
That gave the blind a moment's sight,
Then sank in tenfold gloom;
Loud, deep, and long, the thunder broke,
The deaf ear instantly awoke,
Then closed as in the tomb :
An angel might have passed my bed,
Sounded the trump of God, and fled.
So life appears ;-a sudden birth,
A glance revealing heaven and earth;
It is and it is not!
So fame the poet's hope deceives,
Who sings for after time, and leaves
A name to be forgot.
Life is a lightning-flash of breath;
Fame-but a thunder-clap at death.
Life is the transmigration of a soul
Through various bodies, various states of being;
New manners, passions, new pursuits in each;
In nothing, save in consciousness, the same.
Infancy, adolescence, manhood, age,
Are alway moving onward, alway losing
Themselves in one another, lost at length
Like undulations on the strand of death.
The child!—we know no more of happy childhood,
Than happy childhood knows of wretched eld;
And all our dreams of its felicity
Are incoherent as its own crude visions:
We but begin to live from that fine point
Which memory dwells on, with the morning star:
The earliest note we heard the cuckoo sing,
Or the first daisy that we ever plucked;
1 For a prose description of the hot springs of Iceland, see Henderson's Journal. Montgomery's representations may be compared with Byron's picture of the Staubbach, the "sky-born waterfall" (Wordsworth), in the Canton of Berne (see quotation from his "Swiss Journal" in Murray's Hand-book for Switzerland, or in Moore's Byron, vol. ii. p. 30); with the same poet's Velino cataract, Childe Harold, cant. iv., st. 69; and with Coleridge's Lines on a Cataract, adapted from Count Stolberg. Montgomery's concluding lines look like an allegory of his political opinions.
When thoughts themselves were stars, and birds, and flowers,
Pure brilliance, simplest music, wild perfume.
Then, the grey Elder!-leaning on his staff,
And bowed beneath a weight of years, that steal
Upon him with the secrecy of sleep
(No snow falls lighter than the snow of age.
None with such subtlety benumbs the frame),
Till he forgets sensation, and lies down
Dead in the lap of his primeval mother.
She throws a shroud of turf and flowers around him,
Then calls the worms, and bids them do their office;
-Man giveth up the ghost—and where is he?1
As a self-taught rural poet, possessing great delicacy and beauty of expression and sentiment, Robert Bloomfield is well deserving of remembrance, though now comparatively little read. He was a native of Honnington, in Suffolk; but was working as a shoemaker in London when he produced "The Farmer's Boy,' a pleasing descriptive pastoral poem, which instantly became popular. Bloomfield afterwards published "Rural Tales, Ballads, and Songs," "Good Tidings; or, News from the Farm," "Wild Flowers," "Banks of the Wye," and "May-Day with the Muses," 1822. The latter years of the poet were clouded with ill health and pecuniary difficulties. Hazlitt has justly said that "as a painter of simple, natural scenery, and of the still life of the country, few writers have more undeniable and unassuming pretensions than Bloomfield." His versification also, especially in his later works, is often strikingly spirited, correct, and musical.
Say, ye that know, ye who have felt and seen
Spring's morning smiles and soul enliv'ning green,
Say, did you give the thrilling transport way:
Did your eye brighten, when young Lambs at play
Leaped o'er your path with animated pride,
Or gazed in merry clusters by your side?
Ye, who can smile-to wisdom no disgrace-
At the arch meaning of a kitten's face;
If spotless innocence, and infant mirth,
Excites to praise or gives reflection birth;
In shades like these pursue your favourite joy,
1 Job xiv. 10-We have omitted the intervening Ages; comp. Shakespeare's "Seven Ages," in As You Like It.
Midst Nature's revels, sports that never cloy.
A few begin a short but vigorous race,
And Indolence, abash'd, soon flies the place:
Thus challeng'd forth, see thither, one by one,
From every side assembling playmates run;
A thousand wily antics mark their stay,
A starting crowd, impatient of delay:
Like the fond dove from fearful prison freed,
Each seems to say, " Come, let us try our speed."
Away they scour, impetuous, ardent, strong,
The green turf trembling as they bound along
Adown the slope, then up the hillock climb,
Where every molehill is a bed of thyme;
Then, panting, stop; yet scarcely can refrain ;
A bird, a leaf, will set them off again:
Or, if a gale with strength unusual blow,
Scatt'ring the wild-brier roses into snow,
Their little limbs increasing efforts try;
Like the torn flower, the fair assemblage fly.
Ah fallen rose! sad emblem of their doom;
Frail as thyself, they perish while they bloom!
Where's the blind child, so admirably fair,
With guileless dimples, and with flaxen hair
That waves in every breeze? He's often seen
Beside yon cottage wall, or on the green,
With others matched in spirit and in size,
Health on their cheeks and rapture in their eyes.
That full expanse of voice to childhood dear,
Soul of their sports, is duly cherished here :
And hark that laugh is his, that jovial cry;
He hears the ball and trundling hoop brush by,.
And runs the giddy course with all his might,
A very child in everything but sight;
With circumscribed, but not abated powers,
Play, the great object of his infant hours.
In many a game he takes a noisy part,
And shows the native gladness of his heart;
But soon he hears, on pleasure all intent,
The new suggestion and the quick assent;
The grove invites, delight fills ev'ry breast-
To leap the ditch, and seek the downy nest,
Away they start; leave balls and hoops behind.
And one companion leave-the boy is blind!
His fancy paints their distant paths so gay,
That childish fortitude awhile gives way :
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