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

Yet while angelic bosoms heave with love,
And Watchers bright from heavenly mansions glide
Down to this earth, the prodigal of worlds,
And with the elder love of sinless Truth
Bend o'er our doom, with ever-breathing care
Of pure compassion, are we not beset
By fatal opposites? by fiendish Hosts
Curtain'd in secrecy of hate and hell?
Shapeless, and sightless, round all hearts and hours
Inaudibly they steal: in joy, or gloom,
Present alike to poison or pollute
Man's being. Sin their fascination forms,
And hell in man, for their lost heaven atones:
So deep the horrors of infernal hate!

And what experience have the fiendish band
Who haunt creation with their spells accursed,
From human mind and misery derived,
As, age on age, to murder souls they watch,
And dog them to the very gates of heaven!
Six thousand years of study and of sin
Have deeply, through the labyrinthine heart
Instructed Satan how to wend his way,
Unfelt, unfear'd, deceiving as he goes.

Him Luther imaged, with an awe-struck mind
As God of this world, howsoe'er disguised,
In moments shaded with satanic gloom
And hours of harrowing darkness, when the blood
Ran wildly, aud his heated brain was worn
By fev'rish over-task. And, is the Fiend
A power impersonal, by shapeless awe
Summon'd around us, when the soul is weak?
Not thus did Luther into names abstract
Reduce the Devil; but a Person own
The Archfiend, such as fearless Paul unveil'd,
And, like his pattern, made high reason bow
Before the majesties of truth inspired,
Believing firmly what his Bible spake.
As fact to thought, or law to will is framed,
So scripture to his faith a reason was:
And he who shrunk not from Satanic foes
Mitred, or sceptred, but by zeal inflamed,
High o'er the heavens could wing his dreadless flight
To scorch the angels with a scathing curse,
If other than the gospel-truth they preach'd!—
To fight the devil God's own armour took.
Mail'd with the Spirit's panoply of prayer
Thus was he taught with ghastly fiends to fight,
Weapon'd by grace to lead infernal war.

And was he feeble, while his faith was strong?
Or rather, from his creed heroic might
Derived he not? Simplicity was strength,
In that deep mystery, whose unfathom'd glooms
And paths untrod defy adventurous mind.
Here, God is reason to Himself alone;
To us, mere revelation, and no more,
He deigns to be. Still, o'er forbidden ways
By Him foreclosed, its undisturbéd flight
The pride of Reason in her pagan dreams
Presumes to wing; but drops abash'd, at length,
Down to th' horizon whence conceit arose.
Oh! for a heart as docile, and as deep
In things divine, as that Immortal show'd,
Whose genius round the sun, and mystic stars,
And through the cycles of immensity
The march and movement of eternal Laws
Interpreted; and track'd each orbèd maze,
And, like a Priest o'er planetary worlds
Presiding, taught us how the spheres revolve.
And yet that Solomon in starry lore
Unrivall'd, whose pervading spirit read
Creation's secrets, with untroubled eye,
The Light anatomised to separate hues
By clear dissection, and with steady hand
Felt the tide-heavings of great Ocean's heart
Throbbing for ever with a billowy pulse,—
Sat like a pupil down to Nature's page;
And from her canons all that creed educed
Which makes him seem an oracle of mind
Devout: who, like th' apocalyptic saint
Of Patmos, hath for earthly science shown,
What he for heavenly,—God behind the veil!

And let the worshippers of bright result
Forget not, thus impassion'd Luther won

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The bloodless laurels his brave memory wears,—
E'en by adherence to substantial Faith.
Simple as Newton, who could soar and pray,
Building philosophy on fact alone,
Luther in faith could Luther's self renounce,
And, like the scholar of the Holy Ghost,
Learn hallow'd science from the lips of God.

And, deep the knowledge which his spirit drew
From Heaven's own page, of devils and of men.
A stern arena, where a sightless crowd
Of Fiends and Angels in dread conflict ranged;
Or battle-scene, where strangely-awful Powers
Muster and mingle, and their arms unsheath
For good or evil,—did our world become
To him, who saw it in eternal light.
For, just as when some Empire's outraged heart
Big with emotion, swells with surging zeal,
If but a subject by his slaughter'd life
For Her be fallen, and around his grave
Pours the rich life-blood of Her dearest sons,—
So is our earth, though dismal and depraved,
And darkly mean with vaster worlds compared,
A centre where the Chivalries of heaven
Marshal their forces, and with fiends engage.
The terror of their arms, eye cannot see;
The rushing of their plumes, we do not hear,
Nor view the motions of their mystic flight;
But yet, the contest is for countless Souls,
While for the royalties of heaven they strike!
And who, save those who fetter with the bonds
Of clay all faculties of finer scope,
In some rapt hour when mind is half unearth'd
Like Luther's, have not felt the fight unseen,
And through each dim transparency of sense
Vision'd a battle, which the soul surrounds?