Sacred Meditations and Moral Themes In Verse By the Rev. Robert Montgomery ... Third Edition--Revised and Enlarged |
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THE JUDGMENT OF SOLOMON. |
 | Sacred Meditations and Moral Themes In Verse |  |
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THE JUDGMENT OF SOLOMON.
Time is for day, Eternity for night,
When earth recedes, and Heaven's deep glories dawn
On some rapt sleeper, if the soul be chaste
And conscience pillowed on the peace of Christ.
Then, God and Angels, and bright Spirits oft
Whisper to man, when purified by grace,
Orac'lar Secrets full of mystic lore,
Which make the mind prophetic, till the heart
Throbs with high prescience over things to come.
When earth recedes, and Heaven's deep glories dawn
On some rapt sleeper, if the soul be chaste
And conscience pillowed on the peace of Christ.
Then, God and Angels, and bright Spirits oft
Whisper to man, when purified by grace,
Orac'lar Secrets full of mystic lore,
Which make the mind prophetic, till the heart
Throbs with high prescience over things to come.
And thus, no incantation which the sense
In the full glow of waking life perceives,
Rivals the magic by mysterious night
Evoked, — when Dreams, like Messengers from heaven,
Rise from eternity, and round the soul
Hover and hang, ineffably sublime;
But mocking language, when it tries to catch
Their fine ethereality of truth, and power.—
Yet, all are dreamers, in the heart or head
Pursuing ever some phantasmal good,
Some fairy Eden, where the flowerets bloom
Beyond the winter's blight, or serpent's trail
To waste or wither!—Life itself a dream,
An unreality of wondrous things,
Of change abrupt, or crisis unforecast,—
Often in hours of high-raised fancy grows.
In the full glow of waking life perceives,
Rivals the magic by mysterious night
Evoked, — when Dreams, like Messengers from heaven,
Rise from eternity, and round the soul
Hover and hang, ineffably sublime;
But mocking language, when it tries to catch
Their fine ethereality of truth, and power.—
Yet, all are dreamers, in the heart or head
Pursuing ever some phantasmal good,
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Beyond the winter's blight, or serpent's trail
To waste or wither!—Life itself a dream,
An unreality of wondrous things,
Of change abrupt, or crisis unforecast,—
Often in hours of high-raised fancy grows.
And how religious is the sway of dreams,
Which are the movers of that secret world
Where most we live, and learn, and love,—
Building our being up to moral heights,
Stone after stone, by rising truths advanced
To full experience, and to noble aims!
The tombs of time they open, till the forms,
The faces, and the features of our dead
Lighten with life, and speech, and wonted smiles!
While memory beautifies the Thing it mourns,
And to the dead a deeper charm imparts
Than their gone life in fullest glory had.—
And thus, in visions of the voiceless night,
(Apparelled with that beauty which the mind
Gives to the loved and lovely when no more,)
Rise from their tombs the forms of fleeted days,
Friends of bright youth,—the fascinating dear!
Till back returns life's unpolluted dawn,
And down the garden walk, or cowslip'd field,
(Where once he prattled, full of game and glee,)
The man, transfigured back to childhood,—roves
Tender as tears! So, on the wind-bowed mast
The sailor-boy in dreams a mother hails,
And hears her blessing o'er his pathway breathed;
Or, pale and gasping, ere his life-drops ebb
For ever,—how the soldier thus depicts
In the soft dream of some remembered day,
The hands that reared him, or the hearts that heaved
With omens, when the charm of tented fields
Seduced him from the sweets of sainted home
And virtue!—Dreams are thus half-miracles;
All time they master, and all truths embrace,
Which melt the hardest, and our minds affect
With things profounder than our creed asserts.
Which are the movers of that secret world
Where most we live, and learn, and love,—
Building our being up to moral heights,
Stone after stone, by rising truths advanced
To full experience, and to noble aims!
The tombs of time they open, till the forms,
The faces, and the features of our dead
Lighten with life, and speech, and wonted smiles!
While memory beautifies the Thing it mourns,
And to the dead a deeper charm imparts
Than their gone life in fullest glory had.—
And thus, in visions of the voiceless night,
(Apparelled with that beauty which the mind
Gives to the loved and lovely when no more,)
Rise from their tombs the forms of fleeted days,
Friends of bright youth,—the fascinating dear!
Till back returns life's unpolluted dawn,
And down the garden walk, or cowslip'd field,
(Where once he prattled, full of game and glee,)
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Tender as tears! So, on the wind-bowed mast
The sailor-boy in dreams a mother hails,
And hears her blessing o'er his pathway breathed;
Or, pale and gasping, ere his life-drops ebb
For ever,—how the soldier thus depicts
In the soft dream of some remembered day,
The hands that reared him, or the hearts that heaved
With omens, when the charm of tented fields
Seduced him from the sweets of sainted home
And virtue!—Dreams are thus half-miracles;
All time they master, and all truths embrace,
Which melt the hardest, and our minds affect
With things profounder than our creed asserts.
But when creation with its primal bloom
Was haunted, and the spirit-world appeared
With thrilling nearness on this world of sense
Splendours, and secrets, and mute signs to bring,
Beyond what modern grossness can receive
Or, sanction,—then to patriarchal Mind
In that young period did Jehovah come,
And unto conscience syllable His Name,
By voices deep, in visions most divine:
Or, Apparitions oft at noon of night
Dimly the future to a seer unveiled,—
Woful, or wondrous, or with mercy charged.
Such dreams the mystery of slumber made;
Heralds of grace, and harbingers of Heaven,
And prophets of the Infinite To Come,
They were, and ministered high truth to man.
Sleep was religion, for it glowed with God;
And that which daylight could not, dared not see,—
Oft in some trance when Mind o'er matter ruled,
The night uncurtained, and to soul revealed
Grandeurs and glooms, and glories without name.
Was haunted, and the spirit-world appeared
With thrilling nearness on this world of sense
Splendours, and secrets, and mute signs to bring,
Beyond what modern grossness can receive
Or, sanction,—then to patriarchal Mind
In that young period did Jehovah come,
And unto conscience syllable His Name,
By voices deep, in visions most divine:
Or, Apparitions oft at noon of night
Dimly the future to a seer unveiled,—
Woful, or wondrous, or with mercy charged.
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Heralds of grace, and harbingers of Heaven,
And prophets of the Infinite To Come,
They were, and ministered high truth to man.
Sleep was religion, for it glowed with God;
And that which daylight could not, dared not see,—
Oft in some trance when Mind o'er matter ruled,
The night uncurtained, and to soul revealed
Grandeurs and glooms, and glories without name.
'Twas thus at Gibeon, to the royal sage
Of David born, Jehovah, at deep night
Descended in the shadow of a Dream;
And bade him, round His large and loving Heart
Wind a petition, vast as prayer involves!
But, how, O king! did thine encouraged soul
Climb the dread height of this accorded boon,
Celestial?—Far as Thought could fly,
Upward and heavenward, thy permitted prayer
Might travel; systems, suns, and worlds,
Yea, nothing save the Essence Uncreate,
From thy request was hindered; all was pledged
And promised: what then was thy spoken will?
Not power—though that is property divine;
Not genius—though it be a dazzling spell
That makes, or mars, or glorifies mankind;
Not wealth—though that be worshipped like a god;
Not beauty, fame, nor length of honoured life,
Kingdoms nor thrones, with provinces for slaves,—
No! not for these the destined Son of David asked:
Above all matter, and beyond all mind
Created, did the royal dreamer mount;
For, in his full magnificence of faith,
A gift as boundless as the Giver was
He dared to ask!—and that, was God himself,
In wisdom granted; “Give me,” cried the king,
“Give me, O God, an understanding heart!”
Of David born, Jehovah, at deep night
Descended in the shadow of a Dream;
And bade him, round His large and loving Heart
Wind a petition, vast as prayer involves!
But, how, O king! did thine encouraged soul
Climb the dread height of this accorded boon,
Celestial?—Far as Thought could fly,
Upward and heavenward, thy permitted prayer
Might travel; systems, suns, and worlds,
Yea, nothing save the Essence Uncreate,
From thy request was hindered; all was pledged
And promised: what then was thy spoken will?
Not power—though that is property divine;
Not genius—though it be a dazzling spell
That makes, or mars, or glorifies mankind;
Not wealth—though that be worshipped like a god;
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Kingdoms nor thrones, with provinces for slaves,—
No! not for these the destined Son of David asked:
Above all matter, and beyond all mind
Created, did the royal dreamer mount;
For, in his full magnificence of faith,
A gift as boundless as the Giver was
He dared to ask!—and that, was God himself,
In wisdom granted; “Give me,” cried the king,
“Give me, O God, an understanding heart!”
Wise was the prayer, whose comprehension grasped
In one behest, the brightest of all dowers,—
A wisdom pure, that eyesight of the soul,
Which looks through Morals, up to Morals' source,
The Will Almighty!—But the dream departs,
And calmly dies, like some cathedral strain
Solemnly deep, slow melting into Heaven.
Then wakes the king: but though the vision ends,
The promise fails not; for his prayer begins
Already, through the mind's exalted powers,
And in the many-chambered heart,—to prove
How God by wisdom gives Himself to man.
For, lo! at once, oracularly wise,
And all unparagoned by Grecian sage,
Or Roman sire, in proverb, or in speech,
The kingly Solomon himself approves!—
Judging the heart, and with such cloudless eye,
As if Omniscience to his gaze had lent
A beam directive—perfect as profound.
In one behest, the brightest of all dowers,—
A wisdom pure, that eyesight of the soul,
Which looks through Morals, up to Morals' source,
The Will Almighty!—But the dream departs,
And calmly dies, like some cathedral strain
Solemnly deep, slow melting into Heaven.
Then wakes the king: but though the vision ends,
The promise fails not; for his prayer begins
Already, through the mind's exalted powers,
And in the many-chambered heart,—to prove
How God by wisdom gives Himself to man.
For, lo! at once, oracularly wise,
And all unparagoned by Grecian sage,
Or Roman sire, in proverb, or in speech,
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Judging the heart, and with such cloudless eye,
As if Omniscience to his gaze had lent
A beam directive—perfect as profound.
Two mothers with their new-born infants slept;
Each to the breast her bud of being clasped,
The young heart beating near the mother's own
In thrills and throbs of answering sympathy.
Alone they slumbered, in one chamber housed,
No eye to watch, save His who watches all—
The Slumberless!—But, lo, at night's dead calm,
The one o'erlaid, and unto death deformed
Her helpless, hapless, unresisting babe,
Who died beneath her, like a roseleaf crushed,
Beneath the pressure of some careless foot
Bended, and broken. Then arose that 'reft
And childless mother, and the living babe
From the warm nook of its maternal heart,
(As there it slumbered, like a tiny lamb
Sheltered at evening by its parent's side
From blast, or peril)—took it gently forth;
Thus for the living left the dead, and laid
In pale cold mockery on the mother's breast
That infant breathless!—Morning oped its lids
At last, and with the rising day awoke
The tending mother, to embrace her child,
And pour her life-stream through its little veins!
When—hark! a shriek, a shudder, and a groan
As if the soul were stifled, and all words
Were choked to silence by o'ermastering pain.
All stark and chill th' affrighted mother feels
A pulseless baby on her beating heart!
And yet, last night 'twas loveliness and life,
Radiant with bloom, and like incarnate spring
Beside her:—can it be her own indeed,
With sunken features, and that waxen form?
Not e'en by death could such disguising change
Be acted; therefore on the child who lived
She fixed, she fastened, her most yearning gaze
Of tenderness; and, oh! instinctive Love
The babe and mother eye to eye revealed.
Strange was the sight, and almost awful too,
To mark that parent of her babe bereft,
Living and warm, and with an infant dead,
Born of another, in her arms outlaid;
And then, to look on this—who held a child
With mock affection, miserably like,
But on the lifeless body of her own
Cast a cold gaze, as if her eye were dead,
Or, nature frozen at its very fount!
Each to the breast her bud of being clasped,
The young heart beating near the mother's own
In thrills and throbs of answering sympathy.
Alone they slumbered, in one chamber housed,
No eye to watch, save His who watches all—
The Slumberless!—But, lo, at night's dead calm,
The one o'erlaid, and unto death deformed
Her helpless, hapless, unresisting babe,
Who died beneath her, like a roseleaf crushed,
Beneath the pressure of some careless foot
Bended, and broken. Then arose that 'reft
And childless mother, and the living babe
From the warm nook of its maternal heart,
(As there it slumbered, like a tiny lamb
Sheltered at evening by its parent's side
From blast, or peril)—took it gently forth;
Thus for the living left the dead, and laid
In pale cold mockery on the mother's breast
That infant breathless!—Morning oped its lids
At last, and with the rising day awoke
The tending mother, to embrace her child,
118
When—hark! a shriek, a shudder, and a groan
As if the soul were stifled, and all words
Were choked to silence by o'ermastering pain.
All stark and chill th' affrighted mother feels
A pulseless baby on her beating heart!
And yet, last night 'twas loveliness and life,
Radiant with bloom, and like incarnate spring
Beside her:—can it be her own indeed,
With sunken features, and that waxen form?
Not e'en by death could such disguising change
Be acted; therefore on the child who lived
She fixed, she fastened, her most yearning gaze
Of tenderness; and, oh! instinctive Love
The babe and mother eye to eye revealed.
Strange was the sight, and almost awful too,
To mark that parent of her babe bereft,
Living and warm, and with an infant dead,
Born of another, in her arms outlaid;
And then, to look on this—who held a child
With mock affection, miserably like,
But on the lifeless body of her own
Cast a cold gaze, as if her eye were dead,
Or, nature frozen at its very fount!
Here, in this blank, where truth's detecting ray
Is wanting, and no evidence of eye,
Or ear, or tongue the misty doubt can break,
And disenchant—where person, plea, and all
That for the sentence of adjudging law
A basis forms, is unapparent found—
How shall a Solomon with all his skill
Truth from the cause, like lightning from the cloud,
Elicit? Torture may not be the test,
Lest falt'ring nerves for guilt should be mista'en;
Nor can those lines of heart, that o'er each face
To him upturned, most eloquently rise,
Crimson, or pale, or livid with despair,—
Assure the monarch which the mother is,
Or, whose yon breathing child. Thus judgment, balked
If mortal only, must be paralyzed, or dumb.
But, now, The understanding Heart behold!
By grace accorded in that Dream of night,
Itself shall manifest, and come abroad
Divinely réal, in full act declared,—
Like melody from some deep chord outdrawn
By master-touch of skill's exacting hand,
That gives it being. Difficult and deep,
And thick as darkness by the night of sin
Begotten, though the ravelled cause appear,—
Yet will the shading mystery of guilt,
The pall of crime, itself at once uplift
And guilt its own abhorred confessor be,—
Touched by a spell, and summoned by a wand
Resistless,—by a power from heaven derived.
Is wanting, and no evidence of eye,
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And disenchant—where person, plea, and all
That for the sentence of adjudging law
A basis forms, is unapparent found—
How shall a Solomon with all his skill
Truth from the cause, like lightning from the cloud,
Elicit? Torture may not be the test,
Lest falt'ring nerves for guilt should be mista'en;
Nor can those lines of heart, that o'er each face
To him upturned, most eloquently rise,
Crimson, or pale, or livid with despair,—
Assure the monarch which the mother is,
Or, whose yon breathing child. Thus judgment, balked
If mortal only, must be paralyzed, or dumb.
But, now, The understanding Heart behold!
By grace accorded in that Dream of night,
Itself shall manifest, and come abroad
Divinely réal, in full act declared,—
Like melody from some deep chord outdrawn
By master-touch of skill's exacting hand,
That gives it being. Difficult and deep,
And thick as darkness by the night of sin
Begotten, though the ravelled cause appear,—
Yet will the shading mystery of guilt,
The pall of crime, itself at once uplift
And guilt its own abhorred confessor be,—
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Resistless,—by a power from heaven derived.
Though passion, pride, nor jealousy, nor tears,
Nor loud acclaim, nor clamour's fierce rebuke,
Nor all the blazonry warm feeling wears
On mien, and manner,—can the secret draw
Forth from its hidings; nature still remains:
And to a sense of motherhood, enshrined
In that safe temple, where th' affections lodge,
Will Solomon a thrilling charge send home.—
For all can tragedy, save mother's love,
By mere emotion parody, and act.
Thus both may weep; and Sorrow might assume
In each keen parent what the childless wear
When Grief pines madly;—but for living babe
No heart like mother's with its tone intense
Could throb, with feeling in each pulse alive,—
Yearning, as if her body's frame refined
And grew all spirit, by excess transformed!
Nor loud acclaim, nor clamour's fierce rebuke,
Nor all the blazonry warm feeling wears
On mien, and manner,—can the secret draw
Forth from its hidings; nature still remains:
And to a sense of motherhood, enshrined
In that safe temple, where th' affections lodge,
Will Solomon a thrilling charge send home.—
For all can tragedy, save mother's love,
By mere emotion parody, and act.
Thus both may weep; and Sorrow might assume
In each keen parent what the childless wear
When Grief pines madly;—but for living babe
No heart like mother's with its tone intense
Could throb, with feeling in each pulse alive,—
Yearning, as if her body's frame refined
And grew all spirit, by excess transformed!
“Now bring the sword, and into halves divide
The child which lives, that each her half may have.”
So spake the king; and bade each parent take
A bleeding portion of the child she claimed
Home to her bosom!—But, ere sword could fall,
To cleave the beauty of th' unconcious babe
Asunder,—Nature! what a moving scene
Didst thou uncurtain; like a prophet's word
That cites the Future into action by a breath,
The flash of that adjudging sword unveiled
Secrets, that else in safe eclipse had slept
Unvoiced, and unrevealed:—forth shines the truth
At once by instinct summoned from the soul!
“Cleave the live infant,” was the royal cry;
But was there, could there, can there, be
In breast maternal, to such voice of blood
Assenting echo? One with envy pale,
Stern as the rock, and like the murderous steel
That glittered fiercely o'er the infant babe,
Both cold and cruel,—mute and motionless
There was, who looked unthrilled upon the child,
And, like some tigress into woman shaped,
Assented! “Let the babe divided be,
And each her palpitating half receive,
Nor mine, nor thine.”—e'en thus the she-wolf spake:
Nor sighed, nor shook, nor shed one feeling drop
From mercy's fountain; tearless did she stand,
A heartless mother into granite turned!
The child which lives, that each her half may have.”
So spake the king; and bade each parent take
A bleeding portion of the child she claimed
Home to her bosom!—But, ere sword could fall,
To cleave the beauty of th' unconcious babe
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Didst thou uncurtain; like a prophet's word
That cites the Future into action by a breath,
The flash of that adjudging sword unveiled
Secrets, that else in safe eclipse had slept
Unvoiced, and unrevealed:—forth shines the truth
At once by instinct summoned from the soul!
“Cleave the live infant,” was the royal cry;
But was there, could there, can there, be
In breast maternal, to such voice of blood
Assenting echo? One with envy pale,
Stern as the rock, and like the murderous steel
That glittered fiercely o'er the infant babe,
Both cold and cruel,—mute and motionless
There was, who looked unthrilled upon the child,
And, like some tigress into woman shaped,
Assented! “Let the babe divided be,
And each her palpitating half receive,
Nor mine, nor thine.”—e'en thus the she-wolf spake:
Nor sighed, nor shook, nor shed one feeling drop
From mercy's fountain; tearless did she stand,
A heartless mother into granite turned!
But she, the parent of a stolen child
With what an outburst did her heart speak out
In that dread pause! Before the throne she fell,
As if the sabre through her grieving form
Plunged its fierce way; and there, with lifted eyes
All agony, and hands, whose shudd'ring clasp
With strange convulsion bodied forth a grief
Beyond the tragedy of tears to tell,—
All pale and prostrate, round her babe she twined
Her arms maternal, took one moment's gaze
To feed her mem'ry with a farewell sight,
And then—“Give her, O king! my child;
The dead be mine, the living babe be hers!”
Thus cried Affection; and the truth was there!
There in that motherhood of genuine heart
Apparent. Dear, indeed, yon infant was;
And, like a ray from her own being drawn,—
To lose it from her nursing breast, would be.
But still, at times, perchance, to see it smile;
Or, often in some walk, or meeting-spot
To view the motion of its tiny feet;
Or, hear it lisp some little word, and know
That yet beneath the arch of heaven it lived
And grew, a living, loving, blessed Thing
Of beauty, though from her fond cares removed,
Were better far, than now in weltering gore
To view it mangled!—Therefore back recoiled
Her life-spring, ere the cleaving sword could fall;
And by that instinct, rushing deep, sublime,
Outcame the mother!—like a sudden gem
Full on the soul of Solomon then flashed
The right decision; and on her breast of love
That living infant was at once re-laid,
Stole by the childless robber of the night,
While she had slumber'd.
With what an outburst did her heart speak out
In that dread pause! Before the throne she fell,
As if the sabre through her grieving form
122
All agony, and hands, whose shudd'ring clasp
With strange convulsion bodied forth a grief
Beyond the tragedy of tears to tell,—
All pale and prostrate, round her babe she twined
Her arms maternal, took one moment's gaze
To feed her mem'ry with a farewell sight,
And then—“Give her, O king! my child;
The dead be mine, the living babe be hers!”
Thus cried Affection; and the truth was there!
There in that motherhood of genuine heart
Apparent. Dear, indeed, yon infant was;
And, like a ray from her own being drawn,—
To lose it from her nursing breast, would be.
But still, at times, perchance, to see it smile;
Or, often in some walk, or meeting-spot
To view the motion of its tiny feet;
Or, hear it lisp some little word, and know
That yet beneath the arch of heaven it lived
And grew, a living, loving, blessed Thing
Of beauty, though from her fond cares removed,
Were better far, than now in weltering gore
To view it mangled!—Therefore back recoiled
Her life-spring, ere the cleaving sword could fall;
And by that instinct, rushing deep, sublime,
Outcame the mother!—like a sudden gem
Full on the soul of Solomon then flashed
123
That living infant was at once re-laid,
Stole by the childless robber of the night,
While she had slumber'd.
Mercy, nature, truth,
Concentred, all in that sweet judgment met,
A coronation of pure Feeling made,
And soft as mother's, grew the monarch's voice,
While the big tear of bright emotion hung
On his long eyelash quiv'ring, when he spake,—
“Sheathe the drawn sword! and spare the doubted child;
Behold the mother in that yearning breast,
And quickly let it rock the babe it bore!”
Concentred, all in that sweet judgment met,
A coronation of pure Feeling made,
And soft as mother's, grew the monarch's voice,
While the big tear of bright emotion hung
On his long eyelash quiv'ring, when he spake,—
“Sheathe the drawn sword! and spare the doubted child;
Behold the mother in that yearning breast,
And quickly let it rock the babe it bore!”
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