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

Written on finding a copy of verses in a small edifice so named, at Raithby, in Lincolnshire, the seat of R. C. Brackenbury, to whom the Author made a visit in the autumn of 1815, after a severe illness.

A stranger sat down in the lonely retreat:—
Though kindness had welcomed him there,
Yet, weary with travel, and fainting with heat,
His bosom was sadden'd with care:
That sinking of spirit they only can know
Whose joys are all chasten'd with fears;
Whose waters of comfort, though deeply they flow,
Still wind through the valley of tears.

What ails thee, O stranger! but open thine eye
A paradise bursts on thy view;
The sun in full glory is marching on high
Through cloudless and infinite blue:
The woods, in their wildest luxuriance display'd,
Are stretching their coverts of green,
While bright from the depth of their innermost shade
Yon mirror of waters is seen.

There, richly reflected, the mansion, the lawn,
The banks and the foliage, appear,
By nature's own pencil enchantingly drawn,
—A landscape enshrined in a sphere;
While the fish in their element sport to and fro,
Quick glancing or gliding at ease,
The birds seem to fly in a concave below,
Through a vista of down-growing trees.

The current, unrippled by volatile airs,
Now glitters, now darkens along,
And yonder o'erflowing, incessantly bears
Symphonious accordance to song:—
The song of the ring-dove enamour'd, that floats
Like soft-melting murmurs of grief;—
The song of the red-breast, in ominous notes,
Foretelling the fall of the leaf:—

The song of the bee, in its serpentine flight,
From blossom to blossom that roves;—
The song of the wind in the silence of night,
When it wakens or hushes the groves:—
Thus sweet in the chorus of rapture and love,
Which God in his temple attends,

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With the song of all nature beneath and above,
The voice of these waters ascends.

The beauty, the music, the bliss of that scene
With ravishing sympathy stole
Through the stranger's lorn bosom, illumined his mien,
And soothed and exalted his soul:
Cold gloomy forebodings then vanish'd away,
His terrors to ecstasies turn,
As the vapours of night, at the dawning of day,
With splendour and loveliness burn.

The stranger reposed in the lonely retreat,
Now smiling at phantoms gone by,
When, lo! a new welcome, in numbers most sweet,
Saluted his ear through his eye:
It came to his eye, but it went to his soul;
—Some muse, as she wander'd that way,
Had dropt from her bosom a mystical scroll,
Whose secrets I dare not betray.

Strange tones, we are told, the pale mariner hears
When the mermaids ascend from their caves,
And sing, where the moon's lengthen'd image appears
A column of gold on the waves;
—And wild notes of wonder the shepherd entrance,
Who dreaming beholds in the vale,
By torchlight of glow-worms, the fairies that dance
To minstrelsy piped in the gale.

Not less to that stranger mysteriously brought,
With harmony deep and refined,
In language of feeling and music of thought,
Those numbers were heard in his mind:
Then quick beat the pulse which had languidly crept,
And sent through his veins a spring-tide;
It seem'd as the harp of a seraph were swept
By a spirit that sung at his side.

All ceased in a moment, and nothing was heard,
And nothing was seen, through the wood,
But the twittering cry of a fugitive bird,
And the sunset that blazed on the flood:
He rose, for the shadows of evening grew long,
And narrow the glimpses between;
The owl in his ambush was whooping his song,
And the gossamer glanced on the green.

Oft pausing, and hearkening, and turning his eye,
He left the sequester'd retreat;
As the stars in succession awoke through the sky,
And the moon of the harvest shone sweet;
So pure was her lustre, so lovely and bright,
So soft on the landscape it lay,
The shadows appear'd but the slumber of light,
And the night-scene a dream of the day.

He walk'd to the mansion,—though silent his tongue,
And his heart with its fulness opprest,
His spirit within him melodiously sung
The feelings that throbb'd in his breast:
—“Oh! ye, who inherit this privileged spot!
All blooming like Eden of yore,
What earth can afford is already your lot,
With the promise of ‘life evermore.’

“Here, oft as to strangers your table is spread,
May angels sit down at your board;
Here, oft as the poor by your bounty are fed,
Be charity shown to your Lord;
Thus walking with God in your paradise here,
In humble communion of love,
At length may your spirits, when He shall appear,
Be caught up to glory above.”