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

A Christian never dies; in coffin'd dust
What though he slumber, and the speechless grave
With cold embrace his pallid form receives,
Religion, like the shade of Christ, appears
To heaven-eyed Faith beside the tomb to smile;
And from her lips, seraphically fired,
Rolls the rich strain, “O Death! where now thy sting?
O Grave! thy victory, where?”—extinguish'd both,
And baffled; stingless Death, and strengthless Law
Together round the Cross like trophies hung
Self-vanquish'd; Death himself in Jesus died!

The Christian never dies; his dying hour
To him a birth-day into glory proves:
For then, emerging fetterless and free
From this dark prison-house of earth and sin,
(All sensual dimness like a veil withdrawn)
In mystic radiance soars the seraph-mind
To regions high and holy; where the Truth
Essential, Beauty's uncreated form,
And Wisdom pure, in archetypal state
To souls unearth'd their trinal blaze reveal.—
Unchain the eagle, break his iron bars,
And when aloft, on wings exultant poised,
Sunward he sweeps through clouds of rolling sheen
And makes the blue immensity his home,
Go, mark him! while the flash of freedom breaks
Forth from each eye-ball, in its burning glee;
And there, the imaged rapture of a mounting Soul
When prisonless, from out the body pure,
May fancy witness!—far away it flies,
And where the Sun of Righteousness enthroned,
Eternal noon-tide round His ransom'd pours,
Basks in the smile of glory, and of God!

And thus of thee, the venerably-good,
The mild old Man with apostolic mien,
Let memory in some heavenward moment, think;
Thou art not dead, but from thy bondage free!
Alive, as in the sunbeam lives the mote,
Art thou, encinctured with the blaze of heaven
In that Assembly, where the crown'd ones chant,
With robes blood-whiten'd by the wondrous Lamb.
Oh, what a sunburst of immortal truth
In keen effulgence on thy spirit broke
When forth, from out the fettering walls of flesh
It soar'd!—the dull eclipse of death no more,
The daylight of eternity begun!
Thy bed around, while children knelt and pray'd,
And sorrow trembled into tears and sighs,
Thine was the song ecstatically-loud
From harping Angels, and from hymning Saints
In concord, round the throne of Jesu raised!
And who, when gospel-music charm'd thine ear,
Or promises with preciousness divine
Deep-laden, lighted up thine aged eyes

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With more than youth's glad lustre,—who that heard
Thy holy breathings for the better Land,
And did not from his eyelids dash the tear
Of mourning, when he thought, that thou wert there!
In that pure Home of perfect light and peace
At length arrived! to that bright City brought,
Whose silver-turrets oft thy faith beheld,
When down the streets Imagination walk'd,
By angels, and the Church's first-born lined!

Around that tomb, where thy cold ashes sleep,
The unbought homage which a good man wins
'Twas mine to witness, when the gather'd crowd
Attended, with a train of weeping Hearts
Who knew thee best, and therefore mourn'd thee most.
And well that Scene thy pure and placid life
Betoken'd; Feeling deck'd thy funeral;
The moral blazonry of Christian grief
Was there, and touchingly the whole array'd
With more than splendour,—with the truth of tears!

The hoary Minster, eloquent as vast,
Lifting its forehead with cathedral-grace,
Whose form revered some twice three hundred years
Have girt with grandeur, like a zoning spell
That binds bewitchingly; the tombs antique
By jagged walls, in sculptured ruin bent;
The graves of myriads, like a sea of mounds
In swells of grass on all sides rank'd, and ranged
In death's confusion,—till their cited dust
Leaps into life beneath the trumpet blast
Of Time's archangel, striding Earth and Sea!
The rock-hewn church-yard, with its green uprise
Of monumental landscape, where the grief
Of Nature, and the grace of Sculpture vie
In soft contention, each expressing each,
And hiding death between them, by the spell
That o'er the grimness of the grave is thrown;
All this, while high in front, severely-calm,
The fearless Knox in stony grandeur frown'd,—
Together met, a scene of soul combined,
And made one Sentiment the whole become
Of sacredness and silence! Childhood hush'd
Its laugh; and Youth each lawless smile forewent;
And the mute Crowd a single mourner seem'd,
When slowly, to its last long home was borne
Thine earthly portion! Heaven the better took;
Thy tomb within, one farewell-gaze we had,—
The heart out-speaking with a tongue of tears,
While friend on friend a look of meaning turn'd,
And said no more! The soul must speak above;
No language learns it in this world of graves
And gloom; for silence forms a spirit-voice,
When Faith and Feeling by the tomb embrace.

Pure on the bosom of almighty Love
From sin and sorrow thou art resting now:
And who would bring thee, might availing tears
Be answer'd, back to this cold earth again!
To peace and glory, to perfections high
Around thee smiling, rather may we mount
On these sure wings of faith that carried thee;
And o'er the track thy saintly virtues trod
Her way let holy Imitation wend,
Her eye on Him intently fix'd, and firm,—
Our bright Precursor to the Cross and crown!

And now, farewell! If age's hoary charm;
If gentleness, with solid worth combined;
If faith and truth, by patriarchal grace
Bedeck'd; if boundless love, that god-like smiles
Serenely, over Sects and Names enthroned;
If these were thine; with all the enriching spell
Of temper, cloudless as the crystal noon,
And feelings, tuned by every tender call;
While round about thee hung the glow
Of youth's gay morning, by the eve of age
Subdued, like spring and autumn's blended smile,—
Then, o'er thy grave recording Truth may bend;
And drop, not undeserved, the simple wreath
Of memory, a Muse has ventured now.

Farewell! A few more rolling suns and years
Will yon dark Minster from his turret speak
Of Time's departure, with an iron-voice

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Wailing a hollow dirge o'er life's dead Hours,
And the roused Earth at ev'ry pore will heave
Around thee! Myriads from their pulseless clay
In throbbing consciousness shall rise, and bound
Warm into being!—What a mass of life
Under the trumpet's dead-awaking call
Will stand, and tremble in the gaze of God!
And thou wilt rise; nor rock, nor mountain seek
To crush thee, from the piercing eye of Him
Array'd in lightnings of resistless glare,—
Immanuel! on the Judgment's burning throne
Of glory, wheeling through the heaven of heavens.
And when creation in a tomb of fire
Shall welter, and the wicked lift a cry
Of quenchless agony, beneath the frown
Of truth's Avenger, undismay'd thine eyes
Will greet Him; thou shalt look on God, and live!