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

Another Year, methought a Spirit cried,
Another Year is dead! Still rolls the world
Magnificent as ever; bright the Sun,
And beautiful his native heaven; the Earth
Around looks fresh as on her birth-day morn;
And Man, as gay as if no knell had rung,
No heart been broken, and no tears been shed!
Where, then, the history of the buried Year,
Of weal and woe, of glory and of shame?
Eternal! not a minute fleets away
That to Thy throne a record doth not waft;
Time cannot die; the unapparent Years
Again will rise; and cited Ages come,
And in our human resurrection share.

A Year hath perish'd, who can tell his tale?
Ye Thunders! kings of cloudy wrath sublime,
With herald-lightnings to announce your power,
Say from your sleep shall ye be summon'd forth,
And tell your havoc, in the blaze of noon
And in the night-wing'd tempest darkly made?
Or, shall I bid unbosom'd Ocean yield
Her dead; or let the unfrequented graves
Expand, and show their ghastly inmates, there?

No moral is there loud enough and deep
The laugh of Life to hush above the tomb;
Time, accident, and change,—they melt forgot
Like clouds of feeling: not the dread alarm,
Of Nature can arouse the world to think.—
An earthquake was there in a far-off isle:
The heavens were blacken'd; and the grim waves yell'd,
While Ocean, heaving like a human breast
In agony, groan'd wildly from her depths:
All Earth seem'd fear-struck; on their bowing trees
The leaves hung shuddering; through the heated air
The dull wind mutter'd with a spirit-tone,
And fitfully the island-cities rock'd:
At midnight, came the Earthquake in his ire
And gloom, which made the world's foundations reel!
Temples and towers were shatter'd: shrieks and prayers
Rang in wild tumult through the riven skies;
And, crush'd to dust, a thousand corpses lay

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Gulph'd in the ground and sepulchred by night!
Cold morning came; each brow a sadness cloak'd;
Yet none of Judgment in their doom could dream,
And in the Earthquake hear the Voice of God!

A Year hath vanish'd, and how many eyes
Are film'd, how many lovely cheeks are cold!
What lips, which let out music from the soul,
Are death-seal'd, now! Bend, human Pride, and see
The desolation and the curse of Time.
Monarch of millions! at whose royal feet
The treasures of the ransack'd earth were laid,
And on whose brow the pride of Ages sat,
Where slumberest Thou? the sleep of death is thine;
And worms will revel on thy pulseless clay
As on the meanest of forgotten dust.

What hast thou lost, unheedful World? Thy great
Have died; Spirits amid whose radiant track
In bright eclipse the common herd are lost:
Thy Kings, thy Warriors, and thy Statesmen too
Have perish'd: hast Thou mourn'd thy mighty dead?
Go, weep for One, the wonder of his day,
A mental Titan of amazing grasp,
A man whom England may exult to hail
Her own; a Patriot, round whose dying lips
Her name of glory like enchantment, clung.
His chief inheritance, a lofty soul,
He battled through the darkness of his lot
And shone aloft,—the brightest of them all
Who wrestled with the tempest of renown!
What genius glow'd that gifted mind within,
What eloquence came flowing from the fount
Of salient fulness there,—of Hearts demand
Which each word felt, like new-born feeling, pour
Warm inspiration round them, when with eye
That kindled with the kindling truth, he stretch'd
His mind o'er Empires; and round captive-isles
Bade Liberty her wings of light expand!

But, when the mighty die, the mean begin
To live; and thus with thee, departed One!
Scarce on the wind thy death-knell ceased to moan,
Ere darkly rose the pestilential breath
Of Slander's venal lip, thy name to blight,
And turn thy soul as tainted as her own.
Yes! they the thunders of thy voice who fear'd
In Retribution's high revenge, arose,
And on thy memory heap'd the hoarded wrath
Of envy;—let them riot in their shame!
What though some error cast a doubtful shade
Upon thy glories, shall we laud them less?
Are skies less beautiful, because the clouds
Sail o'er them? shines the morning sun less bright
Because a passing shade his brow profanes?—
A monument in noble minds thou hast,
That will not moulder; Time shall guard it there!

But not alone the glorious and the great
Hast thou entomb'd, thou unreturning Year!
'Tis in the noiseless sphere of common life,
In placid homes, by quiet evening-hearths
Where once the social hearts were gather'd round,
We trace a fearful havoc in thy flight.
Alas! how many whom the infant Year
Beheld in beauty, looking on through life
As through a vista of eternal Joy,
Have vanish'd, like the bloom of early hope!
What blue-eyed babes, the parent knee beside
Reflecting smile for smile, have flown away
Like birds of Paradise, to their own home!
What Creatures, budding into womanhood,
The silent walk who loved, and made the flowers
Companions of their virgin-thoughts, have gone
To graves, with all a mother's treasured hope!
Go, see the mournful chamber, where of yore
When Winter howl'd his dirge, the gush of song
And heart-warm fellowship of feeling hours
Was heard, now mute, as if the tones of Joy
Had never scatter'd echoes there! Alas!
For him, who in the green young spring had wed
The Heart he echo'd; brightly laugh'd the Sun
Upon that morn of love complete; long days
Of bliss, and all the warm romance of youth
In radiant vision gather'd round his heart,
And now, to him a tomb the world becomes!

And thou, dread Fashion, at thy gilded shrine
What victims have been offer'd up! From haunts
Where all the young Emotions bloom and dwell,
And Nature is the holy nurse of Thought,
What maiden victims have been brought to thee!
And saddening 'twas to see their piteous change
From innocence to each corrupting joy:
At home they wander'd in ancestral woods,
Follow'd the brooks, and felt a kindred ray
Flash from their surface o'er the sunny heart;
Yes, beautiful that magic reign of soul,

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When air seem'd haunted with the vocal wings
Of spirits, who beatify the winds;
Or when, with looks expanded in delight,
The heavens they mark'd besprinkled o'er with clouds
And beams, and bless'd The Hand which hung them there:
Then life was holy, full of heavenward joy,
And all their thoughts, like sunbeams, where they fell
Shed brightness and a beauty round: oh! ill
Exchanged for gilded rooms and crowded halls,
For heartless pride and unromantic hours!
Then work'd the havoc of the mind within;
The fount of generous feeling frozen up,
The heart-laugh tamed to an obsequious smile,
And young affection slowly wither'd down
To bleak and barren pomp,—they died;
And heavy knells were rung, when marriage-peals
Like merry prophets, should have loudly hail'd
The coming years;—'twas Fashion stopt their course!

E'en thou, pale Genius! whose unearthly tones
The world intrance, within the grave art sunk,
Since her dim gates Eternity unbarr'd
To let the dead Year in. Yet, one there lived
On whom Oblivion's pall should not have dropt
Her gloom; he never heard a great Man's name
Without a thrill, electric as divine;
He never saw a monument to Mind
But Glory came, and sat him on her throne.
The haughty light I saw, which lit his brow,
The emulation from his soul reveal'd
And mantling all his features with the mind,
When first that ever-haunting dream of Youth,
The goal to which ambitious thoughts would run,
The City-queen of England,—met his gaze
Of wonder. Round him flow'd her streams of life;
Temples, and Towers familiar with the clouds,
And Streets gigantic, in their glittering flow
Branching away like rivers in the sun,
Claim'd tributary awe; but soon grew dim:
From ancient times a mental shadow came,
And in it, his enthusiastic eye
Saw Heroes, Lords and Lights of man and mind!

But genius to itself a martyr is;
And that immortal lava of the soul,
That fire he felt for which there is no name,
Consumed him, while it glorified each thought:
One midnight, when, deserted and untrod,
The Capital had lock'd her thousand limbs
In slumber, and a silence shrouded all
With a cathedral-awe, alone he stood
Some mute vast square amid; and deeply watch'd
The heavens, and spread his spirit to the stars,
That seem'd to brighten as his fancy glow'd!
The mystery of Being; and the might
Of Him, whose fiat moulded sumless worlds;
And Life; and Death; the silence of the grave,
That dark Unknown we all are doom'd to know!—
Assail'd him now; 'twas his last hour of dreams;
The orbs of heaven on him ne'er look'd again,
The Morrow saw him shrouded for the grave!

No more of sorrow for the fleeted year:
No tears can cancel, or recal it now:
Hereafter, when before the throne of God
Dead Ages shall revive, all its crimes
And Virtues will be summon'd to their doom.—
Hark! from a host of dimly-vision'd Spires
The midnight-hour is rolling to the skies,
While doubtful echoes undulate the air,
Then glide away, like shadows, into gloom.
A solemn peal, a farewell-voice of Time,
It leaves a lingering tone in many a heart
Where merriment a home had made! The young
Who hear it in the festive chamber, sigh,
And send their thoughts, sad pilgrims to a tomb;
The aged hear it, and the Dead revive!

A Year hath vanish'd, and another Year
Is born; what awful changes will arise,
What dark events lie hidden in the womb
Of Time, imagination cannot dream.
Ye Heavens! upon whose brow a stillness lies,
Deep as the silence of a thinking Heart
In its most holy hour, the world hath changed,
But ye are changeless; and your midnight-race
Of starry Watchers view our glorious isle,—
Beaming, as when amidst her forest-depths
The savage roam'd, and chanted to the moon.

O England! beautiful, and brave, and free,
With Ocean, like a bulwark round thee thrown,
Thoughts of Thy destiny the heart awake
To fearful wonder; from the wildest state
Of darkness, raised and magnified by Heaven!
What though a troubled Spirit walk the earth
And Fancy hear the distant war-drums roll,
Long may thy sceptre proudly awe the waves;
Still o'er the world enthroned as Island-Queen
While each new year adds glory to thy name,
May Time be vanquish'd, ere he conquer Thee.