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

The hand that gives the angels wings,
And plants the forest by its power,
O'er mountain, vale, and champaign flings
The seed of every herb and flower;
Nor forests stand, nor angels fly,
More at God's will, more in his eye,
Than the green blade strikes down its root,
Expands its bloom, and yields its fruit.

Beautiful daughter of a line
Of unrecorded ancestry!
What herald's scroll could vie with thine,
Where monarchs trace their pedigree?
Thy first progenitor had birth
While man was yet unquicken'd earth,
And thy last progeny may wave
Its flag o'er man's last-open'd grave.

Down from the day of Eden lost,
A generation in a year,
Unscathed by heat, unnipt by frost,
True to the sovereign sun, appear
The units of thy transient race,
Each in its turn, each in its place,
To make the world a little while
Lovelier and sweeter with its smile.

How camest thou hither? from what soil,
Where those that went before thee grew,
Exempt from suffering, care, and toil,
Clad by the sun-beams, fed with dew?
Tell me on what strange spot of ground
Thy rock-born kindred yet are found,
And I the carrier-dove will be
To bring them wondrous news of thee.

How, here, by wren or red-breast dropt,
Thy parent germ was left behind,
Or, in its trackless voyage stopt,
While sailing on the' autumnal wind,
Not rudely wreck'd, but safely thrown
On yonder ledge of quarried stone,
Where the blithe swallow builds and sings,
And the pert sparrow pecks his wings.

Then, by some glimpse of moonshine sped,
Queen Mab, methinks, alighting there,
A span-long hand-breadth terrace spread,
A fairy-garden hung in air,
Of lichens, moss, and earthy mould,
To rival Babylon's of old,
In which that single seed she nurst,
Till forth its embryo-wilding burst.

Now, like that solitary star,
Last in the morn's resplendent crown,
Or first emerging, faint and far,
When evening-glooms the sky embrown,

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Thy beauty shines without defence,
Yet safe from gentle violence,
While infant-hands and maiden-eyes
Covet in vain the tempting prize.

Yon arch, beneath whose giant-span
Thousands of passing feet have trod
Upon the dust that once was man,
Gather'd around the house of God,
—That arch which seems to mock decay,
Fix'd as the firmament to-day,
Is fading like the rainbow's form,
Through the slow stress of Time's long storm.

But thou may'st boast perennial prime;
—The blade, the stem, the bud, the flower,
Not ruin'd, but renew'd, by Time,
Beyond the great destroyer's power,
Like day and night, like spring and fall,
Alternate, on the abbey-wall,
May come and go, from year to year,
And vanish but to re-appear.

Nay, when in utter wreck are strown
Arch, buttress, all this mighty mass,
Crumbled, and crush'd, and overgrown,
With thorns and thistles, reeds and grass,
While Nature thus the waste repairs,
Thine offspring, Nature's endless heirs,
Earth's ravaged fields may re-possess,
And plant once more the wilderness.

So be it:—but the sun is set,
My song must end, and I depart;
Yet thee I never will forget,
But bear thee in my inmost heart,
Where this shall thy memorial be,
—If God so cares for thine and thee,
How can I doubt that love divine
Which watches over me and mine?

1838.