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Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
I only have relinquished one delight,

To live beneath your more habitual sway.

I love the brooks, which down their channels fret,
Even more than when I tripped lightly as they;
The innocent brightness of a new-born day
Is lovely yet;

The clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye

That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live ;
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears;
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

66
FROM THE EXCURSION."-BOOK IV.

RELIGION'S CONSOLATIONS AMIDST EARTHLY CHANGE.

And what are things eternal ?-Powers depart,

*

Possessions vanish, and opinions change,

And passions hold a fluctuating seat :

But, by the storms of circumstance unshaken,
And subject neither to eclipse nor wane,

Duty exists;-immutably survive,

For our support, the measures and the forms,

Which an abstract intelligence supplies,

Whose kingdom is, where time and space are not:

Of other converse, which mind, soul, and heart,

Do, with united urgency, require,

What more, that may not perish? Thou dread Source, Prime, self-existing Cause and End of all,

That in the scale of being fill their place,

Above our human region, or below,

Set and sustained ;-Thou-who did'st wrap the cloud Of infancy around us, that thyself,

Therein, with our simplicity a while

Might'st hold, on earth, communion undisturbed

Who, from the anarchy of dreaming sleep,

Or from its death-like void, with punctual care,
And touch as gentle as the morning light,
Restor'st us, daily, to the powers of sense,
And reason's steadfast rule-Thou, thou alone
Art everlasting, and the blessed spirits
Which thou includest, as the sea her waves :
For adoration thou endur'st; endure
For consciousness the motions of thy will;

For apprehension those transcendent truths
Of the pure Intellect, that stand as laws
(Submission constituting strength and power)
Even to thy being's infinite majesty !
This universe shall pass away-a work,
Glorious because the shadow of thy might,
A step, or link, for intercourse with thee.
Ah! if the time must come, in which my feet
No more shall stray where meditation leads,
By flowing stream, through wood, or craggy wild,
Lov'd haunts like these, the unimprison'd mind
May yet have scope to range among her own,
Her thoughts, her images, her high desires.
If the dear faculty of sight should fail,
Still it may be allowed me to remember
What visionary powers of eye and soul

In youth were mine; when stationed on the top
Of some huge hill-expectant, I beheld
The sun rise up, from distant climes returned,
Darkness to chase, and sleep, and bring the day
His bounteous gift! or saw him, tow'rd the deep,
Sink-with a retinue of flaming clouds
Attended; then, my spirit was entranced
With joy exalted to beatitude;

The measure of my soul was filled with bliss,
And holiest love; as earth, sea, air, with light,
With pomp, with glory, with magnificence!

NATURE MYTHOLOGIZED BY THE GREEKS.

-In that fair clime, the lonely herdsman, stretched
On the soft grass, through half a summer's day,
With music lulled his indolent repose:

And, in some fit of weariness, if he,

When his own breath was silent, chanced to hear
A distant strain, far sweeter than the sounds
Which his poor skill could make, his fancy fetched,
Even from the blazing chariot of the sun,
A beardless youth, who touched a golden lute,
And filled the illumined groves with ravishment.
The nightly hunter, lifting up his eyes
Towards the crescent moon, with grateful heart
Called on the lovely wanderer who bestowed
That timely light, to share his joyous sport:
And hence, a beaming goddess2 with her nymphs,
Across the lawn and through the darksome grove

1 Phœbus Apollo.-See note 6, p. 14.

2 Diana (Artemis). The crescent moon is her symbol. It was the cognizance of the Byzantine emperors, and was adopted by the Turkish conquerors.

(Not unaccompanied with tuneful notes,

By echo multiplied from rock or cave),

Swept in the storm of chase, as moon and stars

Glance rapidly along the clouded heaven,

When winds are blowing strong. The traveller slaked

His thirst from rill or gushing fonnt, and thanked
The Naiad.'-Sunbeams, upon distant hills
Gliding apace, with shadows in their train,
Might, with small help from fancy, be transformed
Into fleet Oreads sporting visibly.

The Zephyrs, fanning as they passed, their wings,
Lacked not, for love, fair objects, whom they wooed
With gentle whisper. Withered boughs grotesque,
Stripped of their leaves and twigs by hoary age,
From depth of shaggy covert peeping forth,
In the low vale, or on steep mountain-side;
And sometimes intermixed with stirring horns
Of the live deer, or goat's depending beard,-
These were the lurking Satyrs, a wild brood
Of gamesome deities; or Pan himself,
The simple shepherd's awe-inspiring god !2

A SIMILE.

Within the soul a faculty abides,
That with interpositions, which would hide
And darken, so can deal, that they become
Contingencies of pomp; and serve to exalt
Her native brightness. As the ample Moon,
In the deep stillness of a summer eve,
Rising behind a thick and lofty grove,
Burns like an unconsuming fire of light
In the green trees; and, kindling on all sides
Their leafy umbrage, turns the dusky veil
Into a substance glorious as her own,
Yea, with her own incorporated, by power
Capacious and serene; like power abides
In Man's celestial spirit; Virtue thus
Sets forth and magnifies herself; thus feeds
A calm, a beautiful, and silent fire,

From the incumbrances of mortal life,

From error, disappointment,—nay, from guilt ;
And sometimes, so relenting Justice wills,
From palpable oppressions of Despair.

1 Naiads, the nymphs of the springs; Oreads, those of the mountains.

For

The name Pan gives origin to the word panic; Polyaenus. The personal attributes of Pan-horns and hoofs-have originated the popular ideas of the figure of Satan. Pan, see note 5, p. 179.

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THE impression created on Cowper's mind by the perusal of Johnson's "Lives of the Poets" was one of sadness, that the biographer's delineations should exhibit in genius so much of failing, of meanness, and of littleness :' and, truly, Johnson's work cannot be read without the feeling that he revels with delight in dragging into conspicuousness everything that can be tortured into blame; in suspecting motives, and in depreciating merits; that he is credulous of evil, and cold to good report. And this tendency is exemplified chiefly in his higher prey, in Milton, Dryden, Pope, &c.: humbler names he either quietly passes with complacent moral approval, or actually by praise moulds into the semblance of virtue or respectability. His life of Savage, placed in contrast with those especially of Milton or Pope, exhibits one of the most striking examples of this disposition of the Aristarchus of the eighteenth century. And all this is the more singular, when we consider the general justice of his literary judgments in the cases of the men to whom he seems personally most hostile. The memoirs of poets, from Johnson's days downwards, including names as memorable in literature as some of those whom he has visited with his lash, display an apparent amount of superiority in all the really valuable qualities of mind and heart, that implies either a condemnation of the principles of the critic's views of human nature, or a vast advance among literary men of the better elements of character. The failings and follies of genius are certainly proverbial; but, in our own century, they seem to have exchanged the relation of rule for that of exception. We have connected these remarks with the name of Mr Montgomery, because he is a poet who, in Johnson's phrase, " descended so low as to become the editor of a newspaper ;" and who, by a consistent and virtuous advocacy of political principles opposed to the Johnsonian code, would, if parity of reason may be trusted, have drawn down on his character an equal measure of the critic's wrath as innocently as did, perhaps the greater men to whom we have alluded. Mr Montgomery, having survived the calumnies and persecutions of his laborious public life, has retired in his age, not only with a character unblemished, but respected and beloved as the advocate of all that is generous in principle and sentiment, and the active promoter of every scheme of practical benevolence. After being twice the victim of the mistaken jealousy of his country's laws, he lives the honoured pensioner of his sovereign.

Mr Montgomery's works consist of numerous smail pieces, some of which rank among the most popular religious poetry of the country; his larger poems are "The Wanderer in Switzerland," "The West Indies," "Greenland," The World before the Flood," and "The Pelican Island." His writings abound with vigorous, though frequently artificially combined, description: the style is perhaps too diffuse, and we miss in it characteristic and specific features; but the spirit of his poetry is throughout pure and elevating.

1 See Roscoe's Introduction to the Life of Pope; and the Letter of Cowper. 2 The Sheffield Iris," which the poet edited for upwards of thirty years. During the jealous times that succeeded the commencement of the war of the French Revolution, he was twice incarcerated in York Castle, for alleged political offences committed in his journal.-See his own vindication, Works, vol. i., Edit. 1841.

I i

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He comes, he comes; the infuriate Geyser springs
Up to the firmament on vapoury wings;
With breathless awe the mounting glory view;
White, whirling clouds his steep ascent pursue.
But, lo, a glimpse !-refulgent to the gale,
He starts all naked through his riven veil ;
A fountain column, terrible and bright,
A living, breathing, moving form of light.
From central earth to heaven's meridian throne,
The mighty apparition towers alone,
Rising, as though for ever he could rise,
Storm, and resume his palace in the skies;
All foam, all turbulence, and wrath below;
Around him beams the reconciling bow;
(Signal of peace, whose radiant girdle binds
Till nature's doom-the waters and the winds);
While mist and spray, condensed to sudden dews,
The air illumine with celestial hues,

As if the beauteous sun were raining down
The richest gems of his imperial crown.
In vain the spirit wrestles to break free,
Foot bound to fathomless captivity;
A power unseen, by sympathetic spell,
For ever working,-to his flinty cell,
Recals him from the rapture of the spheres;
He yields, collapses, lessens, disappears.
Darkness receives him in her vague abyss,
Around whose verge light froth and bubbles hiss,
While the low murmurs of the refluent tide
Far into subterranean silence glide;

The eye, still gazing down the dread profound,
When the bent ear hath wholly lost the sound.
But is he slain and sepulchred ?—Again
The deathless giant sallies from his den,
Scales with recruited strength th' ethereal walls,
Struggles afresh for liberty,-and falls.
Yes, and for liberty the fight renewed,
By day, by night, undaunted, unsubdued,
He shall maintain, till Iceland's solid base
Fail, and the mountains vanish from its face.1

1 For a prose description of the hot springs of Iceland, see Henderson's Journal. Montgomery's representation may be compared with Byron's picture of the Staubbach, the sky-born waterfall" (Wordsworth), in the Canton of Berne (see quotation from his "Swiss Journal" in Murray's Hand-book for Switzerland, or in Moore's Byron, vol. ii. p. 30); with the same poet's Velino Cataract, Childe Harold, Cant. iv., St. 69; and with Coleridge's Lines on a Cataract, adapted from Count Stolberg. Montgomery's concluding lines look like an allegory of his political opinions.

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