"WE MAKE OUR SORROW; NATURE KNOWS ALONE OF HAPPINESS AND PEACE;-(D. M. MOIR)
'TIS GUILT THAT GIRDS US WITH THE THROES AND HYDRA PANGS THAT NEVER CEASE."-MOIR,
"THUS WANE THE NOONDAY DREAMS OF YOUTH AWAY, AND TWILIGHT HUES THE PATH OF LIFE PERVADE;
"OF OUR EARLY FRIENDS THE MEMORIES SEEM-D. M. MOIR)
Heaven were a coinage of the brain,
Religion frenzy, virtue vain,
And all our hopes to meet again,
Then be to us, O dear, lost child,
With beam of love,
A star, death's uncongenial wild
Smiling above;
Soon, soon thy little feet have trod
The skyward path, the seraph's road,
That led thee back from man to God,
Casa Wappy!
Yet 'tis sweet balm to our despair,
Fond, fairest boy,
That heaven is God's, and thou art there
There past is death in all its woes,
There beauty's stream for ever flows,
And pleasure's day no sunset knows,
Casa Wappy!
Farewell, then-for a while, farewell-
Pride of my heart!
It cannot be that long we dwell
Thus torn apart :
Time's shadows, like the shuttle, flee:
And, dark howe'er life's night may be,
Beyond the grave I'll meet with thee,
[From Dr. Moir's "Miscellaneous Poetical Works."]
HALF LOST IN YEARS, THE FRAGMENT OF A DREAM."-MOIR.
THUS, LIKE THE WESTERN SUNLIGHT, RAY BY RAY, INTO THE DARKNESS OF OLD AGE WE FADE."-MOIR.
"THE WORLD IS SELDOM WHAT IT SEEMS;-TO MAN, WHO DIMLY SEES,
"WHAT IS THE WORLD?-A WILDERING MAZE,-(MONTGOMERY)
[JAMES MONTGOMERY was born at Irvine, in Ayrshire, November 4,
1771.
He was educated at the Moravian school at Fulneck, near Leeds,
and afterwards apprenticed to a grocer; but having a strong predilection
for a literary life, he visited London, in the hope of obtaining a publisher
for his poems. Failing in this, he became a clerk in a newspaper office at
Sheffield, where, after a few years, he established the Sheffield Iris, a
weekly journal, which he conducted with equal energy and ability up to
the year 1825. He then retired on a moderate competence honourably
won by a life of labour, and on a pension of £200 conferred by Government,
to enjoy the delights of a lettered ease and the society of admiring friends.
He died in 1854, aged eighty-three. His principal works are:-" The
Wanderer in Switzerland" (1806); "The West Indies" (1808); “The
World before the Flood" (1813); “Greenland" (1819); and “The Pelican
Island" (1821).
"All Mr. Montgomery's poems," says Professor Wilson, "are stamped
with the character of the man. Most of them are breathings of his own
devout spirit, either delighted or awed by a sense of the Divine goodness
and mercy towards itself, or tremblingly alive, not in mere sensibility to
human virtues and joys, crimes and sorrows, for that often belongs to the
diseased and depraved, but in solemn, moral, and religious thought, to all
of good or evil befalling his brethren of mankind. 'A sparrow cannot fall
to the ground,' a flower of the field cannot wither immediately before his
eyes, without awakening in his heart such thoughts as we may believe
God intended should be awakened even by such thoughts as these; for
the fall of a sparrow is a Scriptural illustration of his providence, and his
hand formed the lily, whose array is more royal than was that of Solo-
mon in all his glory."]
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA.
JONG lay the ocean-paths from man concealed;
Light came from heaven, the magnet was revealed,
A surer star to guide the seaman's eye
Than the pale glory of the northern sky;
Alike ordained to shine by night and day,
Through calm and tempest, with unsetting ray;
Where'er the mountains rise, the billows roll,
Still with strong impulse turning to the pole,
WHERE SIN HATH TRACKED TEN THOUSAND WAYS."- -MONTGOMERY.
REALITIES APPEAR AS DREAMS, AND DREAMS REALITIES."-MONTGOMERY.
"HOPE, UNYIELDING TO DESPAIR, SPRINGS FOR EVER FRESH AND FAIR:-(MONTGOMERY)
True as the sun is to the morning true,
Though light as film, and trembling as the dew.
Then man no longer plied with timid oar,
And failing heart, along the windward shore;
Broad to the sky he turned his fearless sail,
Defied the adverse, wooed the favouring gale;
Bared to the storm his adamantine breast,
Or soft on ocean's lap lay down to rest;
While free, as clouds the liquid ether sweep,
His white-winged vessels coursed the unbounded deep;
From clime to clime the wanderer loved to roam,
The waves his heritage, the world his home.
Then first Columbus, with the mighty hand
Of grasping genius, weighed the sea and land;
The floods o'erbalanced:—where the tide of light,
Day after day, rolled down the gulf of night,
There seemed one waste of waters.
His spirit brooded o'er the Atlantic main;
When sudden as creation burst from nought,
Sprang a new world through his stupendous thought,
Light, order, beauty!-While his mind explored
The unveiling mystery, his heart adored;
Where'er sublime imagination trod,
He heard the voice, he saw the face of God.
Far from the western cliffs he cast his eye
O'er the wide ocean stretching to the sky:
In calm magnificence the sun declined,
And left a paradise of clouds behind :
Proud at his feet, with pomp of pearl and gold,
The billows in a sea of glory rolled.
"Ah! on this sea of glory might I sail,
Track the bright sun, and pierce the eternal veil
That hides those lands, beneath Hesperian skies,
Where daylight sojourns till our morrow rise!"
EARTH'S SERENEST PROSPECTS FLY, HOPE'S ENCHANTMENTS NEVER DIE."-MONTGOMERY,
"WHEN VIRTUE DROOPS, AS COMFORTS FAIL, AND SORE AFFLICTIONS PRESS THE MIND,-(MONTGOMERY
66 PRAYER IS THE CHRISTIAN'S VITAL BREATH,
Thoughtful he wandered on the beach alone;
Mild o'er the deep the vesper planet shone,
The eye of evening, brightening through the west
Till the sweet moment when it shut to rest :
'Whither, O golden Venus! art thou fled?
Not in the ocean-chambers lies thy bed;
Round the dim world thy glittering chariot drawn
Pursues the twilight, or precedes the dawn;
Thy beauty noon and midnight never see,
The morn and eve divide the year with thee."
Soft fell the shades, till Cynthia's slender bow
Crested the furthest wave, then sunk below:
"Tell me, resplendent guardian of the night,
Circling the sphere in thy perennial flight,
What secret path of heaven thy smiles adorn,
What nameless sea reflects thy gleaming horn?"
Now earth and ocean vanished, all serene
The starry firmament alone was seen;
Through the slow, silent hours, he watched the host
Of midnight suns in western darkness lost,
Till Night himself, on shadowy pinions borne,
Fled o'er the mighty waters, and the morn
Danced on the mountains. Lights of heaven!" he
“Lead on;—I go to win a glorious bride:
Fearless o'er gulfs unknown I urge my way,
Where peril prowls, and shipwreck lurks for prey:
Hope swells my sail;-in spirit I behold
That maiden world, twin-sister of the old,
By nature nursed beyond the jealous sea,
Denied to ages, but betrothed to me."
The winds were prosperous, and the billows bore
The brave adventurer to the promised shore;
Far in the west, arrayed in purple light,
Dawned the new world on his enraptured sight:
THE CHRISTIAN'S NATIVE AIR."-MONTGOMERY.
PROLONGS HER PLEASING TALE, TILL ALL THE WORLD AGAIN LOOKS KIND."-MONTGOMERY,
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