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

“In the wild mystery of earth and air,
Sun, moon, and star, and the unslumb'ring sea,—
There is a meaning and a power, commix'd
For thought, and for undying fancy tuned.
And by thy panting for the unattain'd
On earth; by longings which no language speak:
By the dread torture of o'ermast'ring doubt;
By thirst for Beauty, such as eye ne'er saw,
And yet is ever mirror'd on the mind;
By Love in her rich heavenliness array'd;
By Guilt and Conscience,—that terrific pair,
Who make the dead to mutter from their tombs,
And colour nature with the hues of hell!—
By Revelation's everlasting truths,—O Man,
Thou art immortal as thy Maker is!”

ANALYSIS OF PART III.

If there be no God, the former parts of this Poem are moulded from dreams of superstitious fiction;— But can we observe the wonders of Creation, and deem Chance their origin?—The consequences that accrue from this distempered doctrine:—By a natural, but melancholy digression, we are here led to glance at Atheism—as partially influencing the horrors of the French Revolution—Marie Antoinette—Her appearance on the balcony during the tumults at Versailles.

Return to a consideration of Atheism—It is a sorry boast to triumph over a belief of man's immortality —If the soul be not immortal, how are we to account for those aspirations which are never satisfied with the highest attainment of earthly enjoyment? The dismal doctrine of believing all ties of love eternally severed by death:—when we reflect on the master-spirits of gone time, can we imagine them eternally quenched?—Consolations derived from a belief in a future state—Pictures of a deathbed of a Sceptic and a Christian — The Poem concludes with a description of the final Doom.

Now, while the stars in meekest beauty rise,
And gaze on earth, like Heaven's maternal eyes,

Oh, let sublime Imagination soar,
And tread the region Milton trod before,
Ride on the deep, or travel with the sun
Far as creation smiles, or time has run,
So shall her eagle eye divinely see
A universe that glows with Deity,—
In every wave and wind, and fruit and flower,
The glory, truth, and terror of His power.

Who hung yon planet in its airy shrine,
And dash'd the sunbeam from its burning mine?
Who bade the ocean-mountains swell and leap,
And thunder rattle from the skyey deep?
Through hill and dale who twined the healthful stream,
Made rain for nurture, and the fruit to teem?
Who charm'd the clod into a breathing shrine,
And call'd it Man, a miniature divine?—
Lord of Creation, Love, and Life, and Light,
Arise, and vindicate Thine awful right!

And dare men dream that dismal Chance has framed
All that the eye perceives, or tongue has named,
The spacious world, and all its wonders, born
Designless, self-created, and forlorn?
That no First Builder plied His plastic force,
Gave to each object form, to motion course?
Then may Religion, Morals, Truth, and Worth,
Perish from out this atheistic earth!
Why should the orphans of the world who roam
O'er earth's bleak waste, without a friend, a home,
With resignation mark their fellow clay
Bask in the sunshine of a better day?
Why should the vagrant shiver at the door,
Nor crush the miser for his treasured ore,
Save Faith's sweet music harmonised the mind,
Whisper'd of Heaven, and bade it be resign'd?

And here let Mem'ry turn her tearful glance
On the grim horrors of tumultuous France;
When blood and blasphemy defiled her land,
And fierce Rebellion raised her savage hand,
While women flung their female hearts away,
Rear'd the red pike, and butcher'd for their pay.

No more the Tocsin for the carnage tolls,
No dead-piled tumbril from the slaughter rolls;
The blood has dried upon each wither'd plain,
And brave La Vendée blooms in peace again;
Still may we paint an image of the times,
And draw a moral from a Nation's crimes.

Ill-fated Land! did godless wisdom pour
The light of liberty from shore to shore?
Ah no, perverted freedom cursed the day
With nameless deeds of horror and dismay;
Virtue was death-struck, Vice alone had power,
And Fiends saw hell on earth, in that black hour!

Let streets of blood, let dungeons choked with dead,
The tortured brave, the royal Hearts who bled;
Let plunder'd cities, and polluted fanes,
The butcher'd thousands piled upon the plains,
Let the foul orgies of stupendous crime
Witness the raging havoc of that time,
When leagued Rebellion march'd to kindle Man,
Fright in her rear, and Murder at her van.

And thou, sweet flower of Austria! slaughter'd queen,
How oft will Hist'ry in thy dreadful scene
Sigh to relate, what once a woman saw,
Whose very look had been a nation's law;
When all high chivalries of heart were fled,
And Treason's dagger pierced the monarch's bed.
But thou wast fearless 'mid the savage yell
When Murder hooted, as the hatchet fell.
Queen to the last! methinks I see thee stand,
With infants clasping thy maternal hand,
And face unmoved the murd'rous throng who came
A deed to do which Earth might shrink to name.

Unmann'd of men! whose thankless eyes can glance
On all around, and deem it born of Chance;
Self-martyr'd victims to appalling doom,
Your life a vision, and your heart a tomb,—
The source and end of Being in the ground,
Where all is silent, and your goal is found!

How charmless time must stream away with you,
To struggle, wish, and weep, and then—Adieu!
Ye cannot stifle Sorrow at her birth,
By hopes prevailing o'er the woes of earth,
Nor soothe the passions which besiege the soul
By immortality's divine control,
Share with the majesty of earth and sky,
Mount on a thought, and talk with Deity!

Boast not of wisdom, if her precepts say
Th' Immortal Essence mingles with the clay;
In polar isles, where wisdom's mellow beam
Ne'er chasten'd beauty's glance, or rapture's dream,
E'en there a Deity pervades the mind,
Speaks in the storm, and travels on the wind.

And shall the Soul, the fount of reason, die,
When dust and darkness round its temple lie?
Did God breathe in it no ethereal fire,
Burning and quenchless, though the breath expire?
Then, why were godlike aspirations given,
That, scorning earth, so often frame a heaven?
Why does the ever-craving wish arise
For better, nobler, than the world supplies?
Ah, no! it cannot be that men were sent
To moulder in ethereal discontent,
That soul was fashion'd for betrayful trust,
To think like God, and perish like the dust!

If Death for ever doom us to the clod,
And earth-born pleasure be our only god,
Remorseless time shall bury all we love,
Nor leave one hope to reunite above;
No more the voice of friendship shall beguile,
No more the mother on her infant smile,
But vanishing, like rain upon the deep,
Nature is,—Nothing, in eternal sleep!

Monarchs of mind! and spirits of the just,
Are ye entomb'd in everlasting dust?
Shall ye, whose names undimm'd by ages shine,
Bright as the flame that mark'd ye for divine,
For ever slumber,—never meet again,
Too pure for sorrow, too sublime for pain?
Ah, no! celestial Fancy loves to fly
With eager pinion, and prophetic eye,
To radiant dwellings of immortal Bliss,
Far from a world so wo-begone as this;
There, as the choral melodies carcer,
And wind and warble through heaven's mystic sphere,
In perfect forms you all again unite,
And worship Godhead on His throne of Light.

When friends have vanish'd to the spirit-home,
And we are left companionless to roam,
Oh, what can cheer our melancholy way,
But hopes of union in the land of Day?
Soul-loved! companions of our greener years,
Warm'd at our joys, and weeping at our tears,
How oft descriptive mem'ry paints each hour,
When friendship triumph'd, and the heart had power!
Yes, hallow'd are those visions of the brain,
When Heaven unveils, and lov'd ones smile again.

And Thou, for ever fond, for ever true,
Beneath whose smile the boy to manhood grew;
To sorrow piteous, and to error mild,
Has Death for ever torn thee from thy child?
Thy voice that counsell'd, charm'd, consol'd, and bless'd,
Thy deep solicitude which found no rest
But in completion of some pure design,
To make my happiness the spring of thine;
Thy boundless love, whose providential gaze
Pour'd light and tenderness round all my ways;
Those myriad fascinations felt and known
Of truth maternal to be borne alone.
(Too coldly prized while we can call them ours,
And feel them gladden the unduteous hours,
But, oh! how worshipp'd, magically dear,
When woke to life by mem'ry's votive tear!)
Though these have perish'd, Love in deathless bloom
Outlives the torpor of the wintry tomb.
There is a clime where sorrow never came,
There is a peace perennially the same;
There rolls a world where sever'd Hearts renew
Bright sympathies, the exquisite and true!
But chasten'd, calm, exalted, and refined
To each pure tone of beatific mind.
There may we meet, departed Spirit! there,
The home of bliss, the paradise of prayer:
A few more pangs, a few more tears to shed,
And I shall mingle with the faded dead;
A few fleet years, and this tried heart must brave
The damp oblivion of the dreamless grave;
When, true as thine, may resignation close
These eyes for glory in their last repose.

And if the Dead on this dull world may gaze
To breathe a blessing round our guarded ways;
If by some ministry, to man unknown,
They still can make a human wish their own,
And wander round, ineffably serene,
That unforgotten home, where life has been,—
Spirit maternal! often gaze on me,
And soothe the pang that so remembers thee!
Hover around me when I mourn, or pray,
Cheer the lone night, and consecrate the day:

When temper kindles, or when passion dares,
Renew thy warning, and recall thy cares,—
Bid thy past love like inspiration rise,
And plead for Virtue with a mother's sighs!

But say! how will the sceptic brave the hour
Of crushing death's inexorable power,
When all this gorgeous world shall glide away,
Like painted dreams before the breath of day?
See, how he shudders at a glance of death;
What doubt and horror hang upon his breath;
The gibb'ring teeth, glazed eye, and marble limb,—
Shades from the tomb stalk out, and stare on him!

Lo, there, in yonder spectre-haunted room,
What mutter'd curses trembled through the gloom,
When pale and shiv'ring, and bedew'd with fear,
The dying sceptic felt his hour draw near!
As the last throes of death convuls'd his cheek,
He gnash'd, and scowl'd, and raised a hideous shriek,
Rounded his eyes into a ghastly glare,
Lock'd his white lips—and all was mute despair.

Go, child of Darkness! see a christian die;
No horror pales his lip, or dims his eye;
No fiend-shaped phantoms of destruction start
The hope religion pillows on his heart,
When with a falt'ring hand he waves adieu,
From Hearts as tender as their tears are true;
Meek as an infant to the mother's breast
Turns, fondly longing for its wonted rest,
So to his God the yielding soul retires,
And in one sigh of sainted peace expires.

But what is death or danger, storm or sea,
What are the loudest thunders launch'd by Thee,
Thou dread Jehovah! to a blazing world,—
Creation from its huge foundation hurl'd?
Then, then will reign Thine unimagin'd power,
And Earth in flames expect her funeral hour.

Ages has awful Time been trav'lling on,
And all hìs children to one tomb have gone;
The varied wonders of the peopled earth,
In equal turn, have gloried in their birth;
We live and toil, we triumph and decay,—
Thus age on age rolls unperceived away;
And thus 'twill be, till Heaven's last thunders roar,
And Man and Nature shall exist no more.

Oh! say, what Fancy, though endow'd sublime,
Can picture truly that sepulchral time,
When the last sun shall blaze upon the sea,
And Time be buried in eternity?
A cloudy mantle will enwrap that Sun
Whose face so many worlds have gazed upon;
The placid Moon, beneath whose pensive beam
We all have loved to wander, and to dream,
Dyed into blood, shall glare from pole to pole,
And tinge the gloomy tempests as they roll;
And those sweet Stars, that like familiar eyes,
Are wont to smile a welcome from the skies,
No more shall fascinate our dreaming sight,
But quench their beauty in perpetual night.—
And, hark! how wildly on the ruin'd shore
Expiring Ocean pants in hollow roar,
While earth's abysses echo back the groan,
And startle Nature on her secret throne!

But ere creation's everlasting pall
Unfold its darkness, and envelop all,
The tombs shall burst, the cited dead arise,
And gaze on Godhead with unblasted eyes.

Hark! from the deep of heaven a trumpetsound
Thunders the dizzy universe around;
From north to south, from east to west it rolls
A blast which summons all created souls;
And swift as ripples form upon the deep
The dead awaken from their dismal sleep!
The Sea has heard it; coiling up with dread,—
Myriads of mortals flash from out her bed,
The graves fly open, and with awful strife
The dust of Ages startles into life!

All who have breathed, or moved, or seen, or felt;
All they around whose cradles Kingdoms knelt;
Tyrants and warriors, who were throned in blood;
The great and mean, the glorious and the good,
Are raised from every isle, and land, and tomb,
To hear the changeless, and eternal doom!

But, while the universe is wrapt in fire,
Ere yet the splendid ruin shall expire,
Beneath a canopy of flame behold,
With shining banners at his feet unroll'd,
Earth's Judge! round Whom seraphic minstrels throng,
And chant o'er golden harps celestial song.—
But, let the hush of holy silence now
Brood o'er the heart, and more than words avow,
While the huge fabric of the world gives way,
And shrieking myriads to the mountains pray,
“Descend upon us! Oh, conceal that sight,
The Lamb encompass'd with consuming light!”

Behold a burning Chaos hath begun,
The moon is crimson'd, and how black the sun!

While cloud-flames, welt'ring in confusion dire,
Flash like a firmament of sea on fire;
Yea, all the billows of the main have fled,
And nought appears but ocean's waveless bed,
Whose cavern'd bosom with tremendous gloom
Yawns on the world like dead Creation's tomb!

But lo! the breathing harvest of the earth
Reap'd from their graves to share a second birth;
Millions of eyes with one deep dreadful stare
Gaze upward through the flaming scene of air,
In pierced Immanuel their own Judge to see,
And hear him sentence man's Eternity!
Wing'd like bright angels, warbling hymns of love,
The saints are soaring unto Christ above;
Still as they mount increasing splendours play,
And light the progress of their hallow'd way.
Yet, hark! what horrid yells beneath him rise
From perish'd Souls, who lift their guilty cries,
And by the brink of sin's awarded Hell
Shriek unto God and man their wild farewell!

But here, let silence our religion be,
And prayer become the Muse's poetry;
Nor must the power of meditative song
Grasp the high secrets which to God belong.
Struck with due awe, let Fancy then retire,
And faith divine the dreaming soul inspire,
Under the shade of that almighty Throne
From whose dread face the Universe hath flown!