Or love's native music have influence to charın, Or sympathy's glow to our feelings are given ; His voice, like the thrillings of hope, is a treasure; CCXLV. ROUND LOVE'S ELYSIAN BOWERS". Round Love's Elysian bowers There shine the purest skies: The cloudless heaven of Beauty's smile. The writer of this song, James Montgomery, one of our most esteemed living poets, was born at Irvine, Ayrshire, in the year 1771, but was not fated for any length of time to inhale the same air as his countryman Robert Burns, having been placed, when only five years of age, by his father, who was a Moravian Missionary, in a Seminary of his own persuasion, at Fulnick in Yorkshire. The young poet, being here secluded from all intercourse with the world, though naturally active in his disposition, assumed an air of thoughtfulness and melancholy, read with avidity all the poetry which came Round Love's deserted bowers. Cold mildews blight the flowers, And pleasures waning moon goes down Then, youth, thou fond believer, The wily tyrant shun; Who trusts the dear deceiver, When Beauty triumphs, ah! beware! Her smile is hope-her frown despair! within his reach, and brooding with fondness over the reveries they engendered, filled a small volume with his own compositions before he was ten years of age. The Moravians intended him for the ministry, but, from his wayward and poetical fancies, they found it impracticable, and were consequently obliged to relinquish their long cherished hopes of seeing him a minister; however, not abandoning altogether their parental duties, they engaged him to a shopkeeper in Wakefield. His restless ambition soon gave him a dislike for this employment, and after being fifteen months with one master, and one year with another, he, in 1787, and when only sixteen years of age, set off for London, in hopes of realising, by the efforts of his pen, his long cherished dreams of wealth and fame; very soon, however, like many others in similar circumstances, he was disappointed, and in a short time left Loudon for Sheffield. Here he engaged with Mr. Gale, the editor of the Sheffield Register, to assist him in conducting that paper, but Mr. Gale, in 1794, being obliged to leave England, to avoid a political prosecution, Mr. Montgomery has carried on the paper since that time, under the name of the Iris." Independently of the laborious and constant attention which this situation requires, he has found leisure to compose The World before the Fbod"- The West Indies"-" The Wanderer of Switzerland" "Greenland"-poems of great excellence, besides a number of smaller pro factions. CCXLVI. AWAY TO THE MOUNTAIN-AWAY! The warrior came down from his tent on the hill, To woo in the vale of Cashmere : "Ah! nay," cried the maid, with forebodings of ill And clasping the maid-spurr'd his courser-and cried, "Away to the mountain-away!" Her home on the mountain was stormy and wild, Unlike the hush'd bowers of Cashmere Yet the fair, when she gaz'd on her wedded one, smil'd, Past wrongs, if recall'd, were but nam'd as a jest, And the warrior's wild words by remembrance were blest, "Away--to the mountain-away!" CCXLVII, THE BRAES OF BALQUHITHER, AIR-"The Three Carls o' Buchanan," Let us go, lassie, go To the braes o' Balquhither, Where the blae-berries grow 'Mang the bonny Highland heather; Where the deer and the rae, Lightly bounding together, Sport the lang summer day I will twine thee a bow'r, By the clear siller fountain, And I'll cover it o'er Wi' the flow'rs o' the mountain; I will range thro' the wilds, And the deep glens sae dreary, And return wi' their spoils To the bow'r o' my deary. When the rude wintry win' On the night-breeze is swelling, As the storm rattles o'er us, Wi' the light lilting chorus. Now the summer is in prime, To our dear native scenes Where glad Innocence reigns CCXLVIII. HAVE YE SAIL'D ON THE BREAST OF THE DEEP +. Have you sail'd on the breast of the deep, When the winds had all silenc'd their breath, Composed on sailing past Cape Trafalgar in the might. |