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

Throned in a vault where sleep departed kings
Behold the Tyrant of the world! Around
His shadowy head he waves a sceptre, made
Of monumental dust; and as it moves,
Before him glide a visionary throng
Of ministers, that do his deadly will.

First, Murder, with an eye of wolfish glare,
And brow of adamantine sternness, frowns,
His brooding visage blanch'd with guilt, and cold
As dead revenge; then Madness, with her locks
Of graceless beauty, crowding o'er a face
Terrifically wild: her cheeks are shrunk
As wither'd flowers, and in her fixèd eye
A lustre, meaningless yet mournful, dwells;
Like a pale cloud she glides along, and looks
Upon her lean-worn palms, before her spread
As tablets, where her idiot thoughts are traced!

Next Melancholy, with a downward brow,
Slow-paced, and solemn in her aspect, comes;
Behind, Intemperance, with degraded face,
Complexion'd like the redden'd clouds, which clasp
The dying sun; then Anger, with a storm
Of meaning hung upon her blacken'd front,
And Terror, eloquently dumb, appear.

With step as noiseless as the slumbering air,
Who comes, in beautiful decay?—her eyes
Dissolving with a feverish glow of light,
Her pallid nostrils delicately closed,
Her ringlets gathered in a languid wreath,
And on that cheek, once round with health's rich bloom,
A hectic tinge, as if the fairy tip
Of Beauty's finger faintly press'd it there:
Alas! Consumption is her fatal name.
But lo, a contrast! fierce with shining mail,
Sublime in aspect and supreme in gait,
Waving a crimson banner o'er his head,
With giant pace, stalks by terrific War!
His task?—To shatter thrones, and sully kings.

To these sad ministers of Death, succeed
Of Maladies a hideous crew; not least
Appalling, Pestilence, with eyes aghast,
And Famine, withered to a woful form.

Next, Phantoms round the Lord of human dust
In pallid indistinctness rise and move
For mental slaughter fearfully predoom'd!
Despair, with hollow, dim, sepulchral eyes;
And Love, the martyr of his own fix'd stake:
Ambition, with a canker-eaten soul;
And Genius, proud and pale, the self-consumed,
Whose gaze Infinity with spirit-light
Hath kindled, while the pining form decays
Like colour from a fainting cloud of eve!

CONTRASTS.

Such are thy delegates, disastrous Power!
Which make the martyr'd world thy prey, and seize
Their victims when and where they please. Alike
To thee the palace or the hut, the hall
Of Pleasure or the house of Wo.—A king
Mounts his high throne, with starry robes begirt;
Each look commands, and bright that royal brow
Beneath the burden of his jewell'd crown;
Before him princely courtiers bow their heads,
And on their fawning cheeks his smiles reflect,
And hover round him like a human god!
Thy bow is bent, thy dooming arrow shot,
And like a cloud-shade by the sun destroyed
Melts the great monarch from his pride and power!
The pale companion of the speechless earth,
A vault his palace, like his brother clay
Corrupted—bid his Court adore him now!

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ANTICIPATIONS.

To die!—this gorgeous world of life and love
Forsake, and fleet beyond the bounds of thought;
To feel the death-dews creeping o'er each limb,
Our life-stream curdle, and the heart grow cold;
To be the flesh-worm's feast; to mould away
And blend our being with embracing dust;
All this, together with imagined wails
Of friends, whose tearful eyes attend our bier,—
Calls a chill horror round the name of death,
Which daunts the good, and makes the bad despair.

ANALOGIES.

All that we love and feel in nature's world
Bears dim relations to our common doom.
The clouds that blush, and die an airy death,
Or melt in weeping showers; the pensive streams
Whose tones are dying music; leaves new-born,
Which fade unpitied in the frosty arms
Of Winter, there to mingle with dead flowers,
Are all prophetic of our own decay.
And who, when hung enchanted o'er some page
Where genius flashes from each living line—
Hath never wander'd to the tomb, to see
The hand that penn'd it or the head that thought?

Dark feelings, coloured by the cloud of death,
With grand oppression thus the mind o'erflow,
As when some warm adorer of the dead
Who live, along the dim and banner'd aisle
Of arch'd cathedral, frames a dream sublime,
And learns how eloquent a tomb can be:
Or roams at twilight, where the Deep resounds,
To watch the ever-rolling waves converge
To where faint ocean weds the sky, and think,
Thus roll the restless hours of time along!

ASSOCIATIONS.

In banquet-halls, where queenly pleasures bloom,
And bright-faced Joy and young-eyed Beauty meet,
To them the shadows of the grave extend.
How oft, as unregarded on a throng
Of lovely creatures, in whose liquid eyes
The heart-warm feelings bathe, I've fondly look'd
With all a Poet's passion, and have wish'd
That years might never mar those perfect smiles,—
How often Death, as with a viewless wand
Has touched the scene, and witch'd it to a tomb,
Where beauty dwindled to a ghastly wreck
While moaning spirits of the Future cried,
Thus will it be when Time has work'd revenge!

LIFE A GRADUAL DEATH.

Our Yesterday is dead; our Morrow dies;
This hour is pining, and the breath we draw
So carelessly, our souls may waft—to where?
Our ages are but periodic tombs
Of those that went before: for childhood seems
The death of infancy; and childhood dies
When youth commences, which itself departs
In daring manhood; then old age begins,
Whose wrinkle deepens into manhood's grave:
Thus death is imaged by our very life!
And hope and pleasure, feeling, action, fame,
Have each their sepulchre: our visions melt
To dimness in Reality's chill tomb;
Creation's self a burning death must die,
And in eternity shall Time expire!

STREET FUNERAL.

And o'er the laughing holiday of life
When men are cheerful as the dancing beam
How often death's terrific darkness frowns!
See! where they come, the black-robed funeral train,
Solemn as silent thunder-clouds athwart
The noon-day sky: from heaven a radiance dies
The flowing pall with hues of mocking light;
Around Life moves his mighty throng, and deep
The death-bells wail along the ebbing air:
But one poor week hath vanish'd,—and that form,
Now clay-cold in the narrow coffin stretch'd,
Stalk'd o'er the street which takes him to his tomb!
On with the mourning train!—the crowd divide
Before them with a busy hum, then close
Behind, like billows by a prow dispersed
That sever but to clash and roar again!

ANGEL OF DEATH.

Angel of Darkness! out of hell evoked,
With dread the bosom of Creation thrill'd
When fell thy shadow over Eden's bower,
Whose beauty wither'd like the spirit's bloom
When the rich breath of young affection dies.
Look back! appall'd Imagination! gaze
Thine eye to dimness, o'er the track of time

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Scathed by his fury! mark the demonwing'd,
'Tis Death! the Uncontrollable! his flight
Begins, whose path wears Desolation's smile!
And how eternity its gate unbars
To let them in, those fleet and countless dead,
While myriads melt and vanish, like the gleams
That flash from fever's eye!—

HIS TRIUMPH.

Thy spell hath work'd,
Thou King of woes! thy wand hath been obey'd;
Destruction saw it, and Her deeds reply!
The sea hath buried in her floating tomb,
The fire devour'd, the blighting pest consumed,
The rocking earthquake into atoms crush'd,
And conflagration, havoc, siege, and war,
And malady which like a fiend-breath acts,
Have martyr'd,—what an unimagined host
Since the first grave for Adam's corpse unclosed!
And, oh, let mother, maid, and orphan tell,
Let parent, friend, whate'er affection clasps
Or sweet relationship of soul implies,—
How tears have rain'd from lids that watch'd and wept
As each beloved one, like a featured Shade
Melted in mute eternity! For Death
Hath cull'd his victims from the choicest bowers
And gardens of Existence: fair as bright
And pure as paradise before the Fall
Have babes departed, ere one smiling look
Hath travers'd earth, or seen the life of things:
And voiceless as the uncomplaining dews
That wither on the dusky cheek of Night,
The silent victims of the heart's decay
Have perish'd! while within the dart was fix'd
And rankling; not a sigh their secret told:
For pure and proud, and delicate as light
Their being faded: 'twas the blight of soul,
The mildew of the mind, that check'd and chill'd
Their health of spirit: friend and parent yearn'd
Around them, wondering where the venom lurk'd
Which thus with cruel stealth defaced and marr'd
That earth-born seraph, Beauty robed for heaven!
But still they faded with a calm decline
Serene as twilight; leaving early death
A lovely secret, by th' Almighty known.

DEATH'S PROGRESS.

What is the Past?—The sepulchre of time
Where lies the dust which once form'd living man.
By thousands oft, or one by one, decay
Hath reap'd mankind for thy dread harvest, Death!
Thus in the forest, where a leafy host
Hangs on the mercy of autumnal winds
In withering tremor, when a howling gust
Havocs the branches, throngs of leaves descend
Countless and quick as human glances fall;
But when the air is tranced, with thrilling tone
A leaflet drops,—how awfully distinct!
To him whose moralising dream surveys
A hue of death on each consumptive bough.

DEATH HAS NO HISTORIAN.

And Thou! pale Chronicler of perish'd years,
Whose page is studded with the dyes of sin
And blood, or brighten'd with deceptive gleams
Of miscall'd glory, what can thy dark book
Of History teach?—but half what Truth has been!
The heat, the struggle, the majestic toils
Of high contention, which colossal Minds
Exhibit on the stage of human dreams,
By thee are traced with emulative glow;
But hadst Thou, by omniscient aid inspired,
The dread instruction from each dying lip
Recorded,—what a page for conscience thine!
A thrilling sermon for the soul to read
Whose text would be, eternity unveil'd!