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

“In silent night the vision of the dead passed by—
I saw our friends all pass,—
And oh! in silent night I saw the open graves—
I saw th' immortal host!”
Klopstock's Odes.

A vision, by eternity unveil'd,
When midnight in a trance of darkness lay,
My soul beheld. Methought that time and earth
Had vanish'd, while the unforgotten Dead
In glory bright and bodiless appear'd.
How deep their gaze! oh, how divine their smile!
A pensive mildness, an immortal grace
Each Semblance wore; the father had not lost
That light paternal which his living eyes
To greet his children, loved to have express'd;
Still on the mother's placid brow was throned
A tenderness, which triumph'd o'er decay;
And perish'd babes, whose beauty dazzled time,
In the young bloom of resurrection rose
Serenely glad, and innocently-bright.

And thus, by dreams of never-dying soul,
The Dead around us, with a voiceless power
Are present, mentally distinct and known;
As though some chain, whose links are unbeheld,
The living and the dead conjoin'd, that love,
E'en in the grave, no gloomy trance might bear,
But throb immortal in the spirit's core!

Thought flies the banquet, to embrace the tomb:
And, oh! if joy-wing'd hours awhile seduce
A faithful mourner from his fond regret;
If the dull prose of daily life contract
And dry his feelings into worldly dust,
Or selfish duty,—how divinely-pure
The calm of intellectual grief again!
Thus can creative fondness from the world
Of parted spirits, all it loved evoke:
And he whose years are chronicles of wo,
From the strange earth, where few companions dwell,
Can wander where the hopes of youth repose,
And make eternity his mighty home.—

A hollow knell heaves mournful on the air,
And my dark song in solemn echo rolls
To that dread music. From this orb of time
Another in the noon of manhood call'd
To lie and fester with unfeeling clay!—
Oh, God! the terror of Thy rising frown
Mantles the universe with more than night:
Each Kingdom, like a childless Rachel, mourns;
A Power of darkness, on the wings of death,
Hath travell'd earth with pestilential speed,
And left but havoc to declare his flight.
How many tombs this Year hath dug! what homes
Are fill'd with desolation's fearful calm!
The chairs are vacant where the Forms we loved
So oft reposed, where still their semblance chains
Our fix'd and fond delusion! In the streets,
Like silent mourners in a talking crowd,
Cold mansions tenantless and still remain,
From whose glad chambers rush'd the household-tones
That made sweet music to a social mind;
And many a garden, whose luxuriant green
And laurell'd bowers the sunbeams loved to grace,
In weedy ruin is decaying now:

610

The hands it welcomed with rewarding bloom,
Are iced by death, and ne'er can tend it more.
'Twas exquisite for him, whose town-worn life
Was fever'd by the hot and fretful day,
When evening, like an angel-wing, could waft
His spirit home, to greet yon tranquil cot
Again, and bid the vexing world depart.
How dear the beauty of each dawning flower,
How rich the melody of choral leaves,
To him, whose wisdom was a feeling mind!

And thou, lone sharer of a widow'd lot!
Where is the language, though a Seraph hymn'd
The poetry of heaven, to picture thee,
Doom'd to remain on Desolation's rock
And look for ever where the Past lies dead!
What is the world to thy benighted soul?
A dungeon! save that there thy children's tones
Can ring with gladness its sepulchral gloom.
Placid, and cold, and spiritually-pale,
Art thou; the lustre of thy youth is dimm'd,
The verdure of thy spirit o'er: in vain
The beaming eloquence of day attracts
Thy heart's communion with Creation's joy;
Like twilight imaged on a bank of snow
The smile that waneth o'er thy marble cheek!

Oh, when shall trial, tears, and torture cease?
Despair, and frenzy, and remorseless gloom,
Defiance, and the Thoughts which crouch before
The bright severity of Virtue's eye,
When shall their mystery lie unweaved, and bare?
When shall the lips of Agony be dumb,
And the dark wail of wounded Nature hush'd?

A Tragedy of twice three thousand years
Hath almost ended; soon perchance, may fall
A Curtain, whose unfolding darkness brings
Oblivion o'er the universe decay'd.
Already looks Earth's final scene begun:
The elements, like human limbs unnerved,
Forego their function; seasons out of tune
Creation's harmony of change destroy;
And in their wildness of unwonted act
Reflective eyes an awful omen read,
By Nature given to prophetic man
Of Time's conclusion. Sea and Air confess
A strange excitement; through the trackless heaven's
Immensity the unheard Comet rolls;
No vision'd eye his path may comprehend,
Nor dread imagination dream, what orbs
May crumble, or what blighted planets shrink
As on the burning Desolator sweeps
And blazes o'er annihilated worlds!

Spoiler of hearts and empires! vanish'd Year,
Ere for eternity thy wings were spread
Alone I listen'd to thy dark farewell.—
The moon was center'd in the cloudless heaven
Pallid as beauty on the brow of death;
And round about her, with attracted beams,
Group'd the mild stars; the anarchy of day
Was hush'd, the turbulence of life becalm'd.
From where I stood, a vast and voiceless plain,
A City garmented with mellow light
Lay visible; and, like romance in stone,
Shone gloriously serene. All sounds were dead:
The dew-drop, stirless as a frozen tear
Gleam'd on the verdure; not an air-tone rang;
The leaves hung trancéd as the lids of Sleep;
Around me Nature in devotion seem'd,
The Elements in adoration knelt,
Till all grew worship,—from the heart of Things
Material, to the conscious soul of man!
'Twas then, sepulchral, hollow, deep, and loud,
The bell of Midnight on the stillness burst
And made the air one atmosphere of awe.

Sublime of hours! I thought on all the grave
Had buried, since the infant Year began:
What dreams, what agonies untold
Dead as the hearts whose depth they once turmoil'd,
Lay motionless, and mute! Of pomp in dust,
Of wither'd pride, of wealth from glory hurl'd,
Of lull'd ambition and appeased despair,—
Of each I dreamt: and then, in sad array,
Pale visions of the Kings of thought arose,
The wise, the wondrous, the adored, whose deaths
Enrich'd eternity with added mind,
Sleep with the Patriarchs now! and one how great!
For whom the costly tears of genius fell;—
The wand is broken, and the Wizard gone!

Many and mighty are the stars of Fame;
But his deep splendour has outdazzled all
Since Shakspeare, that unrivall'd planet! rose,
Whose radiance clad the intellectual heaven.
Yes, he hath vanish'd; but his country wears
A veil of glory that shall garb her clime
For ever. How we hung upon his parting hour!
And when it summon'd the transcendant Mind
From earth to heaven, the souls of myriads felt
O'ershadow'd; Europe bow'd in dim eclipse,
And Kingdoms mourn'd round his imagined tomb.

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Monarchs of time, and ministers of thought,
Felt in the frame of intellectual life
As rolls the blood-tide through our breathing form,
Where is the palace of your spirits now?
In what immensity are ye enshrined,
Imperishably pure? Was quiet earth
In beauty, but an archetype of heaven?
Your dreams, your towering aspirations high,
The far-off shadows of each Truth divine,—
Are all absorb'd in beatific light,
And this world like a rain-drop in the deep
Of time, for ever from the soul dissolved?
Our craving passion for the Unreveal'd
Fain would it know, to what vast height removed,
To what perfection of sublimest powers
Ye are ascended: but, the baffled Wish
Is driven earthward, and cold Nature cries
In tones as thrilling as the touch of Death,
“Back to thy clay, Mortality! and bend
Like Faith, before the infinite Unknown.”

As water copies a portentous cloud
By stern reflection, so the spirit's gloom
Lies darkly-mirror'd on the mimic page.
And if some features of a faded Past
Be thus recall'd, they bring no aimless grief
To deaden song, by female worth inspired.
For seldom, since the groan of earth began,
Hath Woman shone more visibly-divine
Than in the gloom of this remember'd year!
When Forms all spirit, moulded by the touch
Of Nature in her most ethereal power,
Whose beauty, delicate as painted air
At the light breeze seem'd ready to dissolve,
Transform'd by feeling, have at once become
Heroical, for superhuman aid!
Behold that chamber, where a feeble lamp
Is quivering, pulse-like, with a dying flame;
There, by yon couch, a soft-eyed mourner fades
Night after night, with uncomplaining brow:
While a soul flutters in that Form revered
From whence her being,—though her brain should parch
Till the flush'd eyelids hang like drooping flowers
About to wither, still, her watch endures!
The bough may blossom from the tree removed,
Ere young affection, from its parent torn,
Can live and flourish, while one ebbing pulse
Articulates within those precious veins!

And thus, calamity with glory comes:
From out its gloom, as streams from caverns pour,
The tides of human tenderness proceed.
And virtues, which the noon-bright hour of joy
May dazzle, when a cloud of anguish breaks,
Dawn into birth, and decorate the soul
With heaven-born lustre; like the pale-eyed stars
That shut their lids when gaudy daylight rules,
But ope them on the sun-forsaken night.

Then let the scorner, whom the vernal glee
Or laughing wildness of delighted youth
Hath taught, that pleasure would to pain deny
The sacrifice of one exalted tear,
His creed forego: the fount of Woman's heart
Lies deeper than his shallow gaze detects!
For Beauty, that a soulless idol seem'd
Rear'd on the breath of some adoring night,
Oh, let one pang a cherish'd mind convulse,
The mist is scatter'd! and the unblemish'd heart
Free from the world, like day from darkness comes,
And acts at once the ministry of heaven.

Then look at Woman, when by love sublimed:
Misfortune moulds her by a graceful power
To fit the cast of fate; and in her wo
Each mental attribute can bloom as bright
As when the home was costly, and her smile
Fell like a glory on attracted eyes.
As stoops an eagle from his lordly height
Where once he soar'd, companion of the cloud
And storm, so sinks, with a triumphant fall,
Her spirit down to some domestic vale;
There, looks more beauteous in each act and thought
Through the meek round her cottage-virtues run,
Than when it reign'd amid the hall of kings.
A mortal Weakness by the world admired
Let others paint her; and, in Woman find
The uncertain heart by light-wing'd impulse led,
The mind which fruitless admiration feeds,
The tottering purpose, and the tameless will:
There is a passion, that with fine eclipse
O'ershadows all such failing hours present,
When the soul falters,—'tis maternal love!
Unbounded feeling! Space, and Scene and Time
Succumb before thee: infinite in power
As fathomless in depth; no rack affrights,
No dungeon quells, no agony impedes
Thy wondrous action; in the horrid grave
Thou darest to cherish the unconscious Dead,
And heaven admits Thee, when thou soarest there!

Lo, how that feeling with transforming might
Shapes a wild spirit to its tender will!

612

Gay as the breeze and dainty as the flower
To-night behold her, on whose jewell'd head
Fashion hath set an ever-fading crown:
Again regard her!—and the trace of God
Is character'd on that ethereal change
Mien, mind, and manner all have undergone;
As broods a Poet o'er some wordless thought
Affection gazes on her unborn child;
And, ere its being into life expands
Love, like a seraph when the soul departs
For glory, waiting to receive its charge,
Stands on the threshold of commencing Life
Bright with the welcome of a mother's bliss!

Charm of the world! whose light makes human love,
If I apparel with too rich a robe
The fascinations which around thee float,
And on thy beauty let no dimness fall
To mar its radiance, 'tis an error blest,
Though blind: for Thou, in thy transcendent worth,
Art lifted to the highest sphere of Song,
When, like a human providence below,
Thy days are consecrate to deeds of heaven.

Lincoln College, Oxon, 1833.