To Riches? Alas! 'tis in vain ; Who hid in their turns have been hid; The treasures are squandered again; And here in the grave are all metals forbid But the tinsel that shines on the dark coffin lid. To the pleasures which Mirth can afford, The revel, the laugh, and the jeer? Ah! here is a plentiful board! But the guests are all mute as their pitiful cheer, And none but the worm is a reveller here. Shall we build to Affection and Love? Ah no! they have withered and died, Or fled with the spirit above. Friends, brothers, and sisters are laid side by side, Unto sorrow?-the Dead cannot grieve; Not a sob, not a sigh meets mine ear, Which Compassion itself could relieve. Ah, sweetly they slumber, nor love, hope, or fear; Unto Death, to whom monarchs must bow? And here there are trophies enow! Beneath the cold dead, and around the dark stone, Are the signs of a sceptre that none may disown. The first tabernacle to Hope we will build, And look for the sleepers around us to rise! The second to Faith, which insures it fulfilled; And the third to the Lamb of the great sacrifice, Who bequeathed us them both when He rose to the skies. ROBERT POLLOK. In 1827 appeared a religious poem in blank verse, entitled The Course of Time, by ROBERT POLLOK, which speedily rose to great popularity, especially among the more serious and dissenting classes in Scotland. The author was a young licentiate of the Scottish Secession church. Many who scarcely ever looked into modern poetry were tempted to peruse a work which embodied their favourite theological tenets, set off with the graces of poetical fancy and description; while to the ordinary readers of imaginative literature, the poem had force and originality enough to challenge an attentive perusal. The Course of Time' is a long poem, extending to ten books, written in a style that sometimes imitates the lofty march of Milton, and at other times resembles that of Blair and Young. The object of the poet is to describe the spiritual life and destiny of man; and he varies his religious speculations with episodical pictures and narratives, to illustrate the effects of virtue or vice. The sentiments of the author are strongly Calvinistic, and in this respect, as well as in a certain crude ardour of imagination and devotional enthusiasm, the poem reminds us of the style of Milton's early prose treatises. It is often harsh, turgid, and vehement, and deformed by a gloomy piety which repels the reader in spite of the many splendid passages and images that are scattered throughout the work. With much of the spirit and the opinions of Cowper, Pollok wanted his taste and his refinement. Time might have mellowed the fruits of his genius; for certainly the design of such an extensive poem, and the possession of a poetical diction so copious and energetic, by a young man reared in circumstances by no means favourable for the cultivation of a literary taste, indicate remarkable intellectual power and determination of cha racter. Robert Pollok was destined, like Henry Kirke Mid Muirhouse, the Residence of Pollok in Byhood country schools, was sent to the university of Glasgow. He studied five years in the divinity hall under Dr Dick. Some time after leaving college, he wrote a series of Tales of the Covenanters, in prose, which were published anonymously. His application to his studies brought on symptoms of pulmonary disease, and shortly after he had received his license to preach, in the spring of 1827, it was too apparent that his health was in a precarious and dangerous state. This tendency was further confirmed by the composition of his great poem, which was published by Mr Blackwood of Edinburgh about the time that the author was admitted to the sacred office for which he was so well qualified. The greater part of the summer was spent by Pollok under the roof of a clerical friend, the Rev. Dr Belfrage of Slateford, where every means was tried for the restoration of his health. The symptoms, however, continued unabated, and the poet's friends and physicians recommended him to try the climate of Italy. Mr Southey has remarked of Kirke White, that it was his fortune through his short life, as he was worthy of the kindest treatment, always to find it.' The same may be said of his kindred genius, Pollok. His poetry and his worth had raised him up a host of fond and steady friends, who would have rejoiced to contribute to his comfort or relief. Having taken his departure for London, accompanied by a sister, Pollok was received into the house of Mr Pirie, then sheriff of London. An immediate removal to the south-west of England was pronounced necessary, and the poet went to reside at Shirley Common, near Southampton. The milder air of this place effected no improvement, and after lingering on a few weeks, Pollok died on the 17th of September 1827. The same year had witnessed his advent as a preacher and a poet, and his untimely death. The Course of Time, however, continued to be a popular poem, and has gone through eighteen editions, while the interest of the public in its author has led to a memoir of his life, published in 1843. Pollok was interred in the churchyard at Millbrook, the parish in which Shirley Common is situated, and some of his admirers have erected an obelisk of granite to point out the poet's grave. [Love.] Hail love, first love, thou word that sums all bliss! She gathered and selected with her hand, All rarest odours, all divinest sounds, All thoughts, all feelings dearest to the soul: But who would that expound, which words transcends, It was an eve of autumn's holiest mood. Its Maker. Now and then the aged leaf Such was the night, so lovely, still, serene, Her voice, scarce uttered, soft as Zephyr sighs To emblem her he saw. A seraph kneeled, But sweeter still the kind remembrance came, And as they met, embraced, and sat embowered [Morning.] In 'customed glory bright, that morn the sun Their matin song-from arboured bower the thrush [Friendship.] Not unremembered is the hour when friends Nor wonder those-thou wonderest not, nor need'st. And many friendships in the days of time Whose organ-choir the voice of many waters; The lonely bard enjoyed when forth he walked, Nor meant to think; but ran meantime through vast That was; and saw the distant tops of thoughts, And heard unspeakable and marvellous things, [Happiness.] Whether in crowds or solitudes, in streets Of man, him thither sent for peace, and thus! A young immortal then was born! And who The mother's tender heart while round her hung All who had hearts here pleasure found: and oft And watch them run and crop the tempting flower- Of praise-and answered curious questions, put Gems leaping in the coronet of Love! [Picture of a Miser.] But there was one in folly further gone; Held wedded intercourse. Ill-guided wretch! With vigilance and fasting worn to skin The night-man's foot approach, starting alarmed, Most fallen, most prone, most earthy, most debased. None bargained on so easy terms with death. JAMES MONTGOMERY. JAMES MONTGOMERY, a religious poet of deservedly high reputation, was born at Irvine, in Ayrshire, in 1771. His father was a Moravian missionary, who died whilst propagating Christianity in the island of Tobago. The poet was educated at the Moravian school at Fulneck, near Leeds. In 1792 he established himself in Sheffield (where he still resides) as assistant in a newspaper office. In a few years the paper became his own property, and he continued to conduct it up to the year 1825. His course did not always run smooth. In January 1794, amidst the excitement of that agitated period, he was tried on a charge of having printed a ballad, written by a clergyman of Belfast, on the demolition of the Bastile in 1789; which was now interpreted into a seditious libel. The poor poet, notwithstanding the innocence of his intentions, was found guilty, and sentenced to three months' imprisonment in the castle of York, and to pay a fine of £20. In January 1795 he was tried for a second imputed political offence-a paragraph in his paper, the Sheffield Iris, which reflected on the conduct of a magistrate in quelling a riot at Sheffield. He was again convicted and sentenced to six months' imprisonment in York castle, to pay a fine of £30, and to give security to keep the peace for two years. All the persons,' says the amiable poet, writing in 1840, who were actively concerned in the prosecutions against me in 1794 and 1795, are dead, and, without exception, they died in peace with me. I believe I am quite correct in saying, that from each of them distinctly, in the sequel, I received tokens of good-will, and from several of them substantial proofs of kindness. I mention not this as a plea in extenuation of offences for which I bore the penalty of the law; I rest my justification, in these cases, now on the same grounds, and no other, on which I rested my justification then. I mention the circumstance to the honour of the deceased, and as an evidence that, amidst all the violence of that distracted time, a better spirit was not extinct, but finally prevailed, and by its healing influence did indeed comfort those who had been conscientious sufferers.' Mr Montgomery's first volume of poetry (he had previously written occasional pieces in his newspaper) appeared in 1806, and was entitled The Wanderer of Switzerland, and other Poems. It speedily went through two editions; and his publishers had just issued a third, when the Edinburgh Review of January 1807 denounced the unfortunate volume in a style of such authoritative reprobation as no mortal verse could be expected to survive.' The critique, indeed, was insolent and offensive-written in the worst style of the Review, when all the sins of its youth were full-blown and unchecked. Among other things, the reviewer predicted that in less than three years nobody would know the name of the Wanderer of Switzerland,' or of any other of the poems in the collection. Within eighteen months from the utterance of this oracle, a fourth impression (1500 copies) of the condemned volume was passing through the press whence the Edinburgh Review itself was issued, and it has now reached thirteen editions. The next work of the poet was The West Indies, a poem in four parts, written in honour of the abolition of the African slave trade by the British legislature in 1807. This was undertaken at the request of Mr Bowyer, the publisher, to accompany a series of engravings representing the past sufferings and the anticipated blessings of the longwronged Africans, both in their own land and in the West Indies. The poem is in the heroic couplet, and possesses a vigour and freedom of description, and a power of pathetic painting, much superior to anything in the first volume. Mr Montgomery afterwards published Prison Amusements, written during his nine months' confinement in York castle in 1794 and 1795. In 1813 he came forward with a more elaborate performance, The World Before the Flood, a poem in the heroic couplet, and extending to ten short cantos. His pictures of the antediluvian patriarchs in their happy valley, the invasion of Eden by the descendants of Cain, the loves of Javan and Zillah, the translation of Enoch, and the final deliverance of the little band of patriarch families from the hand of the giants, are sweet and touching, and elevated by pure and lofty feeling. Connected with some patriotic individuals in his own neighbourhood in many a plan for lessening the sum of human misery at home and abroad,' our author next published Thoughts on Wheels (1817), directed against state lotteries; and The Climbing Boy's Soliloquies, published about the same time, in a work written by different authors, to aid in effecting the abolition, at length happily accomplished, of the cruel and unnatural practice of employing boys in sweeping chimneys. In 1819 he published Greenland, a poem in five cantos, containing a sketch of the ancient Moravian church, its revival in the eighteenth century, and the origin of the missions by that people to Greenland in 1733. The poem, as published, is only a part of the author's original plan, but the beauty of its polar descriptions and episodes recommended it to public favour. The only other long poem by Mr Montgomery is The Pelican Island, suggested by a passage in Captain Flinders's voyage to Terra Australis, describing the existence of the ancient haunts of the pelican in the small islands on the coast of New Holland. The work is in blank verse, in nine short cantos, and the narrative is supposed to be delivered by an imaginary being who witnesses the series of events related after the whole has happened. The poem abounds in minute and delicate description of natural phenomena-has great felicity of diction and expression-and altogether possesses more of the power and fertility of the master than any other of the author's works. Through which the evening star, with milder gleam, Descends to meet her image in the stream. Besides the works we have enumerated, Mr Mont- Far in the east, what spectacle unknown gomery has thrown off a number of small effusions, Allures the eye to gaze on it alone? published in different periodicals, and short transla- Amidst black rocks, that lift on either hand tions from Dante and Petrarch. On his retirement Their countless peaks, and mark receding land; in 1825 from the invidious station' of newspaper Amidst a tortuous labyrinth of seas, editor, which he had maintained for more than thirty That shine around the Arctic Cyclades ; years, through good report and evil report, his friends Amidst a coast of dreariest continent, and neighbours of Sheffield, of every shade of politi-In many a shapeless promontory rent; cal and religious distinction, invited him to a public entertainment, at which the present Earl Fitzwilliam presided. There the happy and grateful poet ran through the story of his life even from his boyish days,' when he came amongst them, friendless and a stranger, from his retirement at Fulneck among the Moravian brethren, by whom he was educated in all but knowledge of the world. He spoke with pardonable pride of the success which had crowned his labours as an author. Not, indeed,' he said, with fame and fortune, as these were lavished on my greater contemporaries, in comparison with whose magnificent possessions on the British Parnassus my small plot of ground is no more than Naboth's vineyard to Ahab's kingdom; but it is my own; it is no copyhold; I borrowed it, I leased it from none. Every foot of it I enclosed from the common myself; and I can say that not an inch which I had once gained have I ever lost. * * I wrote neither to suit the manners, the taste, nor the temper of the age; but I appealed to universal principles, to unperishable affections, to primary elements of our common nature, found wherever man is found in civilised society, wherever his mind has been raised above barbarian ignorance, or his passions purified from brutal selfishness.' In 1830 and 1831 Mr Montgomery was selected to deliver a course of lectures at the Royal Institution on Poetry and General Literature, which he prepared for the press, and published in 1833. A pension of £200 per annum has since been conferred on Mr Montgomery. A collected edition of his works, with autobiographical and illustrative matter, was issued in 1841 in four volumes. A tone of generous and enlightened morality pervades all the writings of this poet. He was the enemy of the slave trade and of every form of oppression, and the warm friend of every scheme of philanthropy and improvement. The pious and devotional feelings displayed in his early effusions have grown with his growth, and form the staple of his poetry. In description, however, he is not less happy; and in his 'Greenland' and 'Pelican Island' there are passages of great beauty, evincing a refined taste and judgment in the selection of his materials. His late works have more vigour and variety than those by which he first became distinguished. Indeed, his fame was long confined to what is termed the religious world, till he showed, by his cultivation of different styles of poetry, that his depth and sincerity of feeling, the simplicity of his taste, and the picturesque beauty of his language, were not restricted to purely spiritual themes. His smaller poems enjoy a popularity almost equal to those of Moore, which, though differing widely in subject, they resemble in their musical flow, and their compendious happy expression and imagery. Greenland. 'Tis sunset; to the firmament serene O'er rocks, seas, islands, promontories spread, Gives adamantine firmness to the walls. * Slow, solemn, sweet, with many a pause between, Is there a group more lovely than those three 1 The term ice-blink is generally applied by mariners to the nocturnal illumination in the heavens, which denotes to them the proximity of ice-mountains. In this place a description is attempted of the most stupendous accumulation of ice in the known world, which has been long distinguished by this pe culiar name by the Danish navigators. 2 The first Christian missionaries to Greenland. |