glowing even to extravagance, and its sentiments generous, though perhaps tinged slightly with ultra-philanthropy. The poems annexed to it are among his most beautiful compositions. The " Harp of Sorrow," somewhat resembling in the thought the first of the Anacreontic Odes, and which is equally appropriate as a preface to the rest, is a fine expression of individual feeling. We extract two stanzas on the Æolian harp :— "Thus o'er the light Æolian lyre The winds of dark November stray, Till all the air around, A strange bewildering dream of sound, Most heavenly sweet,-yet mournful still." I must also recommend to my readers an exquisite little piece entitled, “A Walk in Spring;" "The Dial;" "Bolehill Trees ;" a fine ballad on the Loss of the Britannia; and a poem on the death of a young lady; who, in her last illness, had been soothed by the perusal of his poems. One of these pieces, "The Molehill," bears a strong resemblance, in the idea, to a piece of Barry Cornwall's, called "The Dream;" in each the poet calls up, in imagination, the forms and scenes in past history, on which his mind has been accustomed to dwell; and the contrast is curious. One surveys the " mighty past" through a medium like that of a cheerful and lightsome summer morning; to the other, the view seems overshaded by a calm and gentle twilight. One calls up the shades of olden love, and beauty, and mirth, the wood nymphs, and youthful gods, and festive monarchs, and heroes who lost all the world for love: the other evokes the legislators, and patriots, and inventors, and poets of old time; and if he deviates from his own course it is in his own way : "With moonlight softness Helen's charms The one, when once his vision of life, and joy, and beauty is broken by a sound of terror, wakes and sleeps no more; his view is bounded by the sprightly and happy world before him : the other, as the "vision of the tomb" dissolves, looks beyond— his thoughts revert to his own immortal hopes and fears, and he concludes in a strain of pensive hope and humble triumph. The "World before the Flood" is, we think, the first of Montgomery's performances. The subject is happy; it is connected with high and beautiful associations; the age of the patriarchs, as has been well observed, is one golden age; the beau ideal of simplicity and happiness; and the spirit of gentleness and affection which the poet has breathed through all his delineations of the domestic life of the patriarchs, imparts to them a beauty which, in its kind, I know not that I have seen equalled. Southey sometimes approaches to it. The Second Canto, in particular, is one piece of chaste and delicious magic from beginning to end; a consecrated fairy ground-a picture of innocent love, touched with an aerial tint, which makes it the more enchanting. I shall quote the address to Twilight from the Sixth Canto : "I love thee, Twilight! as thy shadows roll, The calm of evening steals upon my soul, Sublimely tender, solemnly serene, Still as the hour, enchanting as the scene. I love thee, Twilight! for thy gleams impart And Joy and Sorrow, as the spirit burns, And Hope and Memory sweep the chords by turns, Among the poems subjoined, I am struck particularly with "The Peak Mountains," ""A Daughter to her Mother," and "Departed Days." Of" Greenland" I have scarce time to say any thing. In want of system, and an air of historical detail, it resembles "The West Indies;" but it contains many gorgeous descriptions of icy scenery, and sweet touches of domestic tenderness. The last Canto, which relates the destruction of the Colony of East Greenland by a succession of calamities, is one rapid succession of magnificent and mournful phantasms-the glories of Nature being introduced, as it were, to throw a splendid pall round the departing hopes of man. The poem opens thus : "The moon is watching in the sky; the stars The tide, o'er which no troubling spirits breathe, Where, poised as in the centre of a sphere, The pageant glides through loneliness and night, The concluding lines in the following description of a Moravian settlement strike us as of extreme beauty : "Soon, homes of humble form, and structure rude, And the lorn traveller there, at fall of night, The following is from the last Canto : "Comes there no ship again to Greenland's shore? Far as Imagination's eye can roll, One range of Alpine glaciers to the pole Flanks the whole eastern coast; and, branching wide, That works and frets, with unavailing flow, To mine a passage to the beach below; Thence from its neck that winter-yoke to rend And down the gulph the crashing fragments send. Not wreck'd, nor stranded, yet for ever lost; Its keel embedded in the solid mass; Its glistening sails appear expanded glass; The transverse ropes with pearls enormous strung, Wrapt in the topmast shrouds there rests a boy, Sprung from a race of rovers, ocean-born, Nursed at the helm, he trod dry-land with scorn; And his prophetic thought, from age to age, D Congeal'd to adamant his frame shall fast, On deck, in groupes embracing as they died, When withering horror struck from heart to heart Look'd on yon father, and gave up the ghost; * -Th' immortal dead, whose spirits, breaking free, While with a seraph's zeal, a Christian's love, He breathes from marble lips unutter'd prayer. Save in the west, to which he strains his sight, The glory vanishes, and over all -'tis flown. Cimmerian darkness spreads her funeral pall. Morn shall return, and noon, and eve, and night Perennial ice around th' encrusted bow, The peopled deck, and full-rigg'd masts shall grow, Or spied beneath a crystal pyramid; As in pure amber, with divergent lines, A rugged shell emboss'd with sea-weed shines. From age to age increased with annual snow, This new Mont Blanc among the clouds may glow, The Danish Chronicle says, that the Greenland colonists were tributary to the kings of Norway from the year 1023; soon after which they embraced Christianity. In its more flourishing period this province is stated to have been divided into a hundred parishes, under the superintendence of a bishop. From 1120 to 1408 the succession of seventeen bishops is recorded. In the last-mentioned year, Andrew, ordained Bishop of Greenland, by Askill, Archbishop of Drontheim, sailed for his diocese; but whether he arrived there, or was cast away, was never known. To his imagined fate this episode alludes. Whose conic peak, that earliest greets the dawn. But when th' Archangel's trumpet sounds on high, Naked and pale, before the Judge of all." 66 Among the concluding poems, there are some of exceeding beauty. The lines entitled " Incognita" are characteristic (in the conclusion almost too characteristic) of the author. There is a sweetness in the stanza beginning "Somewhere," which reminds me of more than one passage of Burns :— Image of One, who lived of yore! Once quick and conscious; now no more Were all earth's breathing forms to pass Thou art no Child of Fancy; -Thou And who was she, in virgin prime, Of gentle blood;-upon her birth To bridal bloom her strength had sprung, How long her date, 'twere vain to guess; Her joys and griefs, alike in vain With her, methinks, life's little hour Where dwelt she?-Ask yon aged tree, If from the oak no answer come, The Dead are like the stars by day; But not extinct, they hold their way, Where human thought, like human sight, Somewhere within created space, That she, whose charms so meekly glow, An angel in that glorious realm, The judgments on departed souls. *Henry Cornelius Agrippa, of Nettesheim, counsellor to Charles V. Emperor of Germany, the author of "Occult Philosophy," and other profound works,-is said to have shown to the Earl of Surrey the image of his mistress Geraldine, in a magical mirror. |