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

Sublime of privilege! to be alone,
And hold communion with celestial Grace
In the hush'd temple of a hallow'd mind,
Where thought is worship, and Religion wants
No liturgy, save what the heart inspires.
In pensive solitude our God unveils
Those charms almighty, which a sordid love
Of this vex'd world is all too vain to prize;
Then truth ascends our being's mental throne,
To rule and regulate the life within;
While round us shades of man's Hereafter steal
Till awful conscience, with prophetic eye,
Rehearses what the Judgment-Day will be
To men, and angels. Now, from sense withdrawn,
The pious Soul at length presumes to gaze
Down her own deeps, and there a grandeur finds,
A depth in depth unfathomably retired,
Of consciousness, which makes her more sublime
Than all the gorgeousness of glitt'ring worlds.
A single mind the universe outweighs;
A thought than worlds is more stupendous far;
And yon proud stars, which populate the sky
In dazzling multitudes, are less divine
Than the pale forehead of some pensive man
Beneath them watching, from whose lifted gaze
Outshines divinity; whene'er he thinks!

And this we learn, because in this we live,
When from the perill'd life of passion freed
Within ourselves we dare at last descend:
There, truths unvoiced may thoughtful hearts perceive,
And dread predictions, by no language shaped,
Thrill through our conscience with majestic force
And hint the Being men are doom'd to know.

But, solitude a softer mood enjoys;
The past revives; the tombs of time unlocks,
And in the heart's sad resurrection calls
The dead to life, the dear to love, again!
For when this halcyon o'er the spirit broods,
The chain of life, electrically touch'd,
Link after link unwinds, and leads us back
From manhood, with its false and fretting cares,
To childhood, basking in maternal smiles.
Soothed into softness, now the stern can weep;
And shamed ambition from itself recoils
To think how basely, on the World's false shrine
The hopes and aims, which heaven alone can meet,
Our life hath squander'd, with a fruitless zeal.
Ye dreams of Virtue! oft in vice exhaled;
Ye hopes of Greatness! oft in ruin sunk;
Ye full-wing'd Energies! which cleaved your flight
High o'er the vault of young Ambition's heaven,
Reality, the stubborn, and the true,
To airy nought, hath frown'd ye all away!

Still, may we profitably mourn; and muse,
When Memory o'er tombs of buried time
Bends her pale brow, and placidly recals
The spring-like radiance of exulting youth.
For what, though blasting disappointment sear'd
The buds of promise on our tree of Hope,
And few have actualized the heart's fond dreams,
Yet, contrast is our teacher: and we know
The truth, by trial only as we live;
And man who sins, by suff'ring must be saved,
While God, through disappointment, makes him wise.

Then hush'd for aye, let all rebellions be:
But welcome, Solitude, however drear,
And come, Reflection! with thy charms august,
And Mem'ry! oft our deeper yearnings wake;
Be to the husband, all the wife appear'd
In the chaste beauty of her spousal morn;
Be to the orphan, what the mother was
When by her knee he knelt, a dimpled boy
Lisping his little prayer; or, on her breast
Pillow'd his head, as if the world were peace:
Act all within, that life without has been,
And from the grave, where dead and dear ones lie,
People our homes with forms true hearts revere!