The poetical works of James Montgomery :: :: University of Virginia Library

From West Arabia to Bochara came
A noble youth, Abdallah was his name;
Who journey'd through the various East to find
New forms of man, in feature, habit, mind;
Where Tartar-hordes through nature's pastures run,
A race of Centaurs,—horse and rider one;
Where the soft Persian maid the breath inhales
Of love-sick roses, woo'd by nightingales;
Where India's grim array of idols seem
The rabble-phantoms of a maniac's dream:
—Himself the flowery path of trespass trod,
Which the false Prophet deck'd to lure from God.
But He, who changed, into the faith of Paul,
The slaughter-breathing enmity of Saul,
Vouchsafed to meet Abdallah by the way:
No miracle of light eclipsed the day;
No vision from the' eternal world, nor sound
Of awe and wonder, smote him to the ground;
All mild and calm, with power till then unknown,
The Gospel-glory through his darkness shone;
A still small whisper, only heard within,
Convinced the trembling penitent of sin;
And Jesus, whom the Infidel abhorr'd,
The Convert now invoked, and call'd him Lord.
Escaping from the lewd Impostor's snare,
As flits a bird released through boundless air,
And, soaring up the pure blue ether, sings,
—So rose his Spirit on exulting wings.
But love, joy, peace, the Christian's bliss below,
Are deeply mingled in a cup of woe,
Which none can pass:—he, counting all things loss
For his Redeemer, gladly bore the cross:
Soon call'd, with life, to lay that burden down,
In the first fight he won the Martyr's crown.

Abdallah's friend was Sabat;—one of those
Whom love estranged transforms to bitterest foes:
From persecution to that friend he fled;
But Sabat pour'd reproaches on his head,
Spurn'd like a leprous plague the prostrate youth,
And hated him as falsehood hates the truth;
Yet first with sophistry and menace tried
To turn him from “the faithful word” aside;
All failing, old esteem to rancour turn'd,
With Mahomet's own reckless rage he burn'd.
A thousand hideous thoughts, like fiends, possess'd
The Pandemonium of the Bigot's breast,
Whose fires, enkindled from the' infernal lake,
Abdallah's veins, unsluiced, alone could slake.

The victim dragg'd to slaughter by his friend,
Witness'd a good confession to the end.
—Bochara pour'd her people forth to gaze
Upon the direst scene the world displays,
The blood of innocence by treason spilt,
The reeking triumph of deep-branded guilt:
—Bochara pour'd her people forth, to eye
The loveliest spectacle beneath the sky,
The look with which a Martyr yields his breath,
—The resurrection of the soul in death.
“Renounce the Nazarene!” the headsman cries,
And flash'd the unstain'd falchion in his eyes:
“No!—be his name by heaven and earth adored!”
He said, and gave his right hand to the sword.
“Renounce Him, who forsakes thee thus bereft;”
He wept, but spake not, and resign'd his left.
“Renounce Him now, who will not, cannot save;”
He kneel'd like Stephen, look'd beyond the grave,
And, while the dawn of heaven around him broke,
Bow'd his meek head to the dissevering stroke:
Out-cast on earth a mangled body lay;
A spirit enter'd Paradise that day.

But where is Sabat?—Conscience-struck he stands,
With eye of agony and fast-lock'd hands.
Abdallah, in the moment to depart,
Had turn'd, and look'd the traitor through the heart:
It smote him like a judgment from above,
That gentle look of wrong'd forgiving love!
Then hatred vanish'd; suddenly repress'd
Were the strange flames of passion in his breast;
Nought but the smouldering ashes of despair,
Blackness of darkness, death of death, were there.
Ere long, wild whirlwinds of remorse arise;
He flies,—from all except himself he flies,
And a low voice for ever thrilling near,
The voice of blood, which none but he can hear.

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He fled from guilt; but guilt and he were one,
A Spirit seeking rest and finding none;
Visions of horror haunted him by night,
Yet darkness was less terrible than light;
From dreams of woe when startled nature broke,
To woes that were not dreams the wretch awoke.
Forlorn he ranged through India, till the Power,
That met Abdallah in a happier hour,
Arrested Sabat: through his soul he felt
The word of truth; his heart began to melt,
And yielded slowly, as cold Winter yields
When the warm Spring comes flushing o'er the fields;
Then first a tear of gladness swell'd his eye,
Then first his bosom heaved a healthful sigh;
That bosom parch'd as Afric's desert land;
That eye a flint-stone in the burning sand.
—Peace, pardon, hope, eternal joy, reveal'd,
Humbled his heart: before the cross he kneel'd,
Look'd up to Him whom once he pierced, and bore
The name of Christ which he blasphemed before.
—Was Sabat then subdued by love or fear?
And who shall vouch that he was not sincere?

Now with a Convert's zeal his ardent mind
Glow'd for the common weal of all mankind;
Yet with intenser faith the' Arabian pray'd,
When homeward thought thro' childhood's Eden stray'd.
—There, in the lap of Yemen's happiest vale,
The shepherds' tents are waving to the gale;
The Patriarch of their tribe, his sire, he sees
Beneath the shadow of ambrosial trees;
His Sisters, from the fountain in the rock,
Pour the cool sparkling water to their flock;
His Brethren, rapt on steeds and camels, roam
O'er wild and mountain, all the land their own:
—Thither he long'd to send that book, unseal'd,
Whose words are life, whose leaves his wounds had heal'd;
That Ishmael, living by his sword and bow,
Might thus again the God of Abraham know;
And Meccan Pilgrims to Caäba's shrine,
Like locusts marching in perpetual line,
Might quit the broad to choose the narrow path,
That leads to glory, and reclaims from wrath.

Fired with the hope to bless his native soil,
Years roll'd unfelt, in consecrated toil,
To mould the truths which holy writers teach
In the loved accents of his mother's speech;
While, like the sun, that always to the west
Leads the bright day, his fervent spirit press'd,
Thither a purer light from Heaven to dart,
—The only light that reaches to the heart;
Whose deserts blossom where its beams are shed,
The blind behold them, and they raise the dead.
Nor by Arabia were his labours bound,
To Persian lips he taught “the joyful sound.”
Would he had held unchanged that high career!
—But Sabat fell like lightning from his sphere:
Once with the morning stars God's works he sung;
Anon a Serpent, with envenom'd tongue,
Like that apostate fiend who tempted Eve,
Gifted with speech,—he spake but to deceive.

Let pity o'er his errors cast a veil!
Haste to the sequel of his tragic tale.
Sabat became a vagabond on earth;
—He chose the sinner's way, the scorner's mirth;
Now feign'd contrition with obdurate tears,
Then wore a bravery that betray'd his fears!
With oaths and curses now his Lord denied,
And strangled guilty shame with desperate pride;
While inly-rack'd he proved what culprits feel,
When conscience breaks remembrance on the wheel.
At length an outlaw through the orient isles,
Snared in the subtilty of his own wiles,
He perish'd in an unexpected hour,
To glut the vengeance of barbarian power;
With sackcloth shrouded, to a millstone bound,
And in the' abysses of the ocean drown'd.
—Oh! what a plunge into the dark was there!
How ended life?—In blasphemy or prayer?
The winds are fled that heard his parting cry,
The waves that stifled it make no reply.

When, at the resurrection of the Just,
Earth shall yield back Abdallah from the dust,
The sea, like rising clouds, give up its dead,
Then from the deep shall Sabat lift his head.
With waking millions round the judgment-seat,
Once, and but once again, those twain shall meet,
To part for ever,—or to part no more:
—But who the' eternal secret shall explore,
When Justice seals the gates of heaven and hell?
The rest—that day, that day alone, will tell.

1821.