The Poetical Works of Robert Montgomery :: :: University of Virginia Library

Though ruin'd, deathless man is noble still,
In whom fair lines and lineaments remain
Of all he was,—ere sin by lawless will
Cast on the glorious Soul a guilty stain;
And not with harsh irreverence should we dare
One trace despise, which Heaven has treasured there.

As round a gloomy shrine, in grand decay
Where crumbling arch and ruin'd pillar fall,
Remnants of beauty yet the pile array
And the dead sculpture into life recall,
When sacred fancy with religious eye
Dreams in the ages of a World gone by,—

So, 'mid the sinful waste of man perverse
Faint hues and harmonies of Eden dwell,
Not all remanded by the righteous curse
Which on the forfeit-state of Adam fell:
Round the sad ruin of his fallen soul
Shadows divine of vanish'd Glory roll.

But if by earth-fed passion, lust, or pride,
Greedy of gain, or gorged with self-esteem,
Majestic reason is just power denied,
The central life becomes a ghastly dream,
Where all our faculties and functions blend
In dread confusion, which can never end.

For then, Incarnate Wisdom so declares,
That which by nature should our light become,
And starlike, lead us through the night of cares
Which deepens round us till we reach our home,
Itself is darkness! and the beam that glows
Is that which Falsehood to blind feeling shows:

How great the “darkness,” not e'en Christ hath said!
As though such midnight of the mind surpass'd
Whate'er rebellion of the heart or head
By finite language can be call'd, or class'd:—
“Darkness” that e'en from Him a wonder drew,
To Whom no sight in earth, or hell, was new!

Single the Eye, when jealous conscience guards
Its vestal chastity by prayer and truth,
And not to Reason, but to Grace awards
Those inward laws which hallow age and youth,—
Those godlike principles by which men live,
And the dread Soul to its own Author give.

Resist we, then, the sorceries of sin;
The lust of income and the love of power
Cloud the clear Eye, whose vision acts within
And ought to rule and rectify each hour:
So will our reason, with no jaundiced gaze,
Interpret duty through a blinding haze.

Religious principle and moral code
Diseased by passion, most perversely act;
And Vice, recoiling from heaven's narrow road,
Dares its own decalogue of Self enact:
Our way is hell-ward, though we heed it not,
Sinai renounced, and Calvary forgot.

Oh! better far be reasonless and mad,
Than thus transform the rectifying Guide
Which God ordain'd to govern good and bad,
And legislate on virtue's lovely side;
For, when distorted, conscience proves a curse
Whose cruel wisdom makes condition worse.

As though the needle in its compass were
Reversely guiding o'er a sea of gloom
The storm-heaved ship, while lurid tempests glare,
And ocean blackens like a billowy tomb;—
Her wreck is fated though she proudly rides
In foaming triumph o'er the furious tides!

Nor dream that when by damning vice depraved,
The central light of reas'ning conscience fails
To warn the victim of desires enslaved,
Corrective Wisdom o'er such doom prevails:—
An Archimedes in the world of mind
Who fix'd his lever and hath raised mankind,

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If not with him the single eye and pure
For sacred guardianship of soul remain,—
His teachings prove but spell-words to allure
The hearts which hear them, into vice and pain:
The rays of Genius, when to darkness turn'd,
What fiendish laurels have they found, and earn'd!

Spirit of wisdom! pure and perfect Light,
Come from Thy region of celestial grace,
Through the bad gloom of unbelieving night
Dart the mild beams of Thy majestic face:
By loving Thee, saints learn to grow divine,
And as they live, resemble Thee, and Thine.

That single Eye, which God and glory views,
Whose seeing power by holiness is keen,
And doth o'er all things Christ supremely choose,—
Be this our wisdom in life's perill'd scene;
So shall we vanquish, by enduring, ill,
And find it heaven to do our Father's will.