On I move, nor will I slacken

Sail, though verging tow'rds the tomb:
Bright beyond,-on heaven's high strand,
Lo, the lighthouse !-land, land, land!

Cloud and sunshine, wind and weather,
Sense and sight are fleeing fast;
Time and tide must fail together,
Life and death will soon be past;
But where day's last spark declines,
Glory everlasting shines.'

But we find we are rambling through the volume, and neglecting what may be considered its most important piece, at least as far as length is concerned. We allude to a poem, in the heroic stanza, entitled Lord Falkland's dream '-a supposed vision the night before he fell at Newbury-of which the poetical drift is a denunciation against civil war, and indeed against war in every shape. The sentiment which pervades this poem is commendable, but we confess we are not fond of visions, and wish in general that good advice were conveyed in any other way. The Voyage of the Blind,' a powerful and impressive poem which follows, is founded on a remarkable fact, namely, the voyage of the ship Rodeur, in the year 1819, from Africa, with a slave cargo on board, when, owing to the occurrence of opthalmia among the slaves, both crew and captives became blind, with the exception of one seaman, on whom the fate of the vessel depended, and by whom it was ultimately guided into the harbour of Guadaloupe. The poem opens with a fine stanza :'O'er Africa the morning broke, And many a negro land revealed, From Europe's eye and Europe's yoke In Nature's inmost heart concealed; Here rolled the Nile his glittering train From Ethiopia to the main,

And Niger there uncoiled his length,
That hides his fountain and his strength
Among the realms of noon;
Casting away their robes of night,
Forth stood in nakedness of light
The mountains of the moon.'

The appearance of the disease, and the first fatal conviction among the crew that sight was gone for ever, and that they were left without a guiding star upon a trackless ocean, is thus described :

The twofold plague no power could check;

Unseen its withering arrows few;
It walk'd in silence on the deck,

And smote from stem to stern the crew:
-As glow-worms dwindle in the shade,
As lamps in charnel-houses fade,
From every orb, with vision fired,
In flitting sparks the light retired;
The sufferers saw it go,

And o'er the ship, the sea, the skies,
Pursued it with their failing eyes,
Till all was black below.

A murmur swell'd along the gale,

All rose, and held their breath to hear;
All look'd, but none could spy a sail,
Although a sail was near:

—" Help! help!" our beckoning sailors cried;
"Help! help!" a hundred tongues replied:
Then hideous clamour rent the air,

Questions and answers of despair:

Few words the mystery clear'd;
The pest had found that second bark,
Where every eye but his was dark,

Whose hand the vessel steer'd.'

We will not farther pursue this horrible voyage, but turn to another very powerful production, which succeeds it, and which bears the somewhat singular title of A Story without a Name.' As a narrative poem, though desultory, and leaving many gaps to be filled up by the imagination, it seems to us among the most successful of Mr Montgomery's pieces. It is the history of a fratricide-one who rashly, yet not in sudden wrath,' had slain his only brother, who is haunted unceasingly, like Dion, by the memory of his crime.

• In vain he strove to fly the scene,
And breathe beyond that time;
Tormented memory glared between;
Immortal seem'd his crime:

His thoughts, his words, his actions all
Turned on his fallen brother;

That hour he never could recall,
Nor ever live another.

To him the very clouds stood still,
The ground appeared unchanged;

One light was ever on the hill,
-That hill where'er he ranged:

He heard the brook, the birds, the wind,
Sound in the glen below;

The self-same tree he cower'd behind,

He struck the self-same blow.'

All friends have forsaken him save one, but she, as if the cords of affection and sympathy were drawn tighter by the breaking of all other ties, only becomes the more attached, the more inseparable.

'He had no friend on earth but thee,

No hope in heaven above,

By day and night, o'er land and sea,
No refuge but thy love;

Nor time nor place, nor crime nor shame,
Could change thy spousal truth;
In desolate old age the same

As in the joy of youth.

*

*

He wandered here, he wandered there,
And she his angel guide ;-
The silent spectre of Despair,
With Mercy at his side.
Whose love and loveliness alone

Shed comfort round his gloom,
Pale as the monumental stone
That watches o'er a tomb.'

The desolate pair have crossed the Atlantic; in vain the fratricide seeks death; storm and pestilence have no power over him; amidst the wild beasts and reptiles of the desert he sleeps and wakes unharmed; in the battle-field death flies from him; and when he tries to nerve his arm to suicide, it is paralysed by some unseen and irresistible power. It is on the scaffold that he is destined to expiate his guilt: following the dim impulse of his fate he returns to his country; still with the partner of his love and of his sorrows by his side.

They land, they take the wonted road,

By twice ten years estranged;

The trees, the fields, their old abode,
Objects and men had changed:
Familiar faces, forms endear'd,

Each well-remember'd name,
From earth itself had disappear'd,
Or seem'd no more the same.

The old were dead, the young were old;
Children to men had sprung;

And every eye to them was cold,

And silent every tongue :

Friendless, companionless, they roam,

Amidst their native scene;

In drearier banishment at home,

Than savage climes had been.'

Justice seizes on his prey,' and he is consigned to a dungeon, which his wife is not permitted to share with him. At last the trial comes.

On him, while every eye was fix'd,
And every lip repress'd,

Without a voice, the rage unmix'd,
That boil'd in every breast;

It seemed, as though that deed abhorr'd,
In years far distant done,
Had cut asunder every cord
Of fellowship but one,-

That one indissolubly bound
A feeble woman's heart:
-Faithful in every trial found,
Long had she borne her part:
Now at his helpless side alone,
Girt with infuriate crowds,

Like the new moon her meekness shone,
Pale through a gulf of clouds."'

He is condemned, as might be expected; and the fourth day after his trial is to be the last of his existence. The third night has already arrived.

That night by special grace she wakes

In the lone convict's cell,

With him for whom the morrow breaks,
To light to heaven or hell:

Dread sounds of preparation rend

The dungeon's ponderous roof;

The hammer's doubling strokes descend,
The scaffold creaks aloof.

She watch'd his features through the shade,
Which glimmering embers broke ;
Both from their inmost spirit pray'd;
They pray'd, but seldom spoke:
Moments mean while were years to him;
Her grief forgot their flight,

Till on the hearth the fire grew dim;
She turn'd, and lo! the light-

The light less welcome to her eyes,
The loveliest light of morn,

Than the dark glare of felons' eyes,
Through grated cells forlorn:

The cool fresh breeze from heaven that blew,
The free lark's mounting strains,
She felt in drops of icy dew,

She heard, like groans and chains.

"Farewell!"-'twas but a word, yet more
Was utter'd in that sound,
Than love had ever told before,
Or sorrow yet had found:

They kiss like meeting flames,-they part,
Like flames asunder driven;

Lip cleaves to lip, heart beats on heart
Till soul from soul is riven.'

·

On the catastrophe we need not dwell. We have quoted enough, we think, to show that in this poem Mr Montgomery has displayed no common energy and originality. The piece entitled a Voyage round the World' has some pretty stanzas, but wants a connecting purpose. Birds' is a pleasing capriccio in verse. The stanzas, entitled a Lucid Interval'-(though we cannot perceive the propriety of the title), are very beautiful. Of the remaining pieces, the Snake in the Grass,' the Retreat,' and a Recollection of Mary F***,' are our chief favourites. But the finest of the shorter lyrical pieces, is Recluse,' with which we shall conclude our extracts.

A fountain issuing into light
Before a marble palace, threw
To heaven its column, pure and bright,
Returning thence in showers of dew;

But soon a humbler course it took,
And glid away a nameless brook.

Flowers on its grassy margin sprang,

Flies o'er its eddying surface play'd,
Birds midst the alder-branches sang,

Flocks through the verdant meadows stray'd;

The weary there lay down to rest,

And there the halcyon built her nest.

'Twas beautiful, to stand and watch
The fountain's crystal turn to gems,
And from the sky such colours catch,
As if 'twere raining diadems;
Yet all was cold and curious art,

That charm'd the eye, but miss'd the heart.