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

And to this world, around whose vision'd scene
Our thoughts have trembled, Luther's wearied soul
Advances; soon will that tried heart repose
In peace, beyond the loudest blast of time
To ruffle. Twice some thirty years have delved
Deep on his open brow their wrinkling trace;
And often hath he died in thought, and pray'd
At home with Jesu in yon heavenly clime
To have his welcome! Hopes, beyond man's world
To wither, far above the earth have borne
His spirit; in the balance of the truth
Its visions and its vanities he weigh'd,
And found them wanting! Warn'd by heaven, he waits
A kind dismissal to his last long home.
For there, how many have before him fled,
And seem to hail him from their thrones of grace
Celestial! 'Tis not, that proud murmurs rise
From out his noble spirit; but the hue
Of Life's pale sunset, whose foreboding charm
O'ershades the present with prophetic gloom.
Youth with the living loves gay converse bright;
Age with the dead can high communion hold,
Nor calls it mournful, when the graves unclose
Their treasures, or departed friendships rise;
While votive Mem'ry drops the tear intense
By Feeling gather'd in some aged eye!

And such, perchance, within the pensive gaze
Of Luther glisten'd, when in hoary eld
That home he enters, where a foodless boy
Through Eisleben from house to house he sang
For bread! and dropt unseen the bitter tear
Which moisten'd it, when cast from churlish hands.
There, at his window, on the wintry heavens
Bleak with the blast, and white with flaking snow,
Dejectedly a thoughtful gaze he fix'd,
While heaved his spirit with a swell of prayer
By man unheard, but audible in heaven,
Where thought is utt'rance. On his frame o'erbow'd
Chill age was falling; and both languid nerves,
And feeble sense, a boding symptom gave
How soon with him the silver cord would loose,
And bowl be broken at the fountain-head!
But not for this repined he: for the Church
He sorrow'd; and her doom with tearful eye,
Foretold, as witness'd in the war of Creeds
Around him raging. Thus, an autumn-tinge
Sadden'd his future with prophetic shades
Of woe and weakness; till, at times, he long'd
Like Simeon, now in solemn peace to part,
And on the bosom of his Lord expire.
His work is done; his warfare is complete;
And from eternity there seem'd to sound

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A bugle-note, that summon'd his retreat
Home to the heaven salvation's Captain won.

And what a world of undeveloped thoughts
That moment of mysterious calm contain'd!
As in the centre of all boyish dreams
And hours departed, there he mused, and pray'd;
Or the long windings of his wondrous life
Haply with tears retraced, with sighs renew'd,
And God in shade and sunshine equal saw,
Guardian, and Guide, and Glory of his days
Perpetual! Like a fated life had been
The vast experience of his varied course,
From lowly nothing to that Alpine height
Of fame and influence, where his manhood climb'd,
And age was resting: scarce had patriarch's dream
Or prophet's vision more of strange and stern
And awful, in the things of God beheld
Or suffer'd, than the Saxon monk endured,
From faithful Enoch down to fearless Paul!
For, when had God His imprimatur put
With brighter proof, than on the boundless Work
Which now o'er kings and kingdoms, Man and Mind,
Breathed of brave Luther, wheresoe'er it came?
Sinful, indeed, before That Eye he felt,
In Whose bright ray the heavens unclean appear;
But faithful to his Lord, and creed, and cause,
Mercy had kept him; and to Him he gave
The crowning merit of the mighty Whole.

'Twas thus a charm of retrospective peace
Besoothed him, when he felt no dread reproach
From craft, or compromise, o'erwhelm'd him now.
Firm had he lived, and faithful would he die,
In life unblemish'd and in death the same!