 | The Poetical Works of Robert Montgomery |  |
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?
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!
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!
| The Poetical Works of Robert Montgomery | |