Or love's native music have influence to charm, Or sympathy's glow to our feelings are given ; Still dear to each bosom the Blue-bird shall be; His voice, like the thrillings of hope, is a treasure; For thro' bleakest storms, if a calm he but see, . He comes to remind us of sunshine and pleasure! Round Love's Elysian bowers The softest prospects rise ; There shine the purest skies : * 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, rend with avidity all the poetry which came Round Love's deserted bowers. Tremendous rocks arise ; Tornadoes rend the skies: Then, youth, thou fond believer, The wily tyrant shun; Will surely be undone ! 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 ministes; 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 Lonton, in hopes of realising, by the efforts of his pen, his bag cherished dreams of wealth and fame; very soon, however, like many others in similar circunstances, he was disappointed, and in a short time left Inulon for Sheffield. Here he engaged with Mr. Gale, the editor of the Sbetfield 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 composes. The World before the Fool"_" The West Indies"-" The Wanderer of Switzerland"" Grumiand"-poems of great excellence, besides a number of smaller pro tactions. 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 she shrank from love's profer in fear; He scoff'd at her tremulous “ Nay;" “ Away--to the mountain--away!" Her home on the mountain was stormy and wild, Unlike the hush'd bowers of Cashinere And love planted paradise there; From a cloud e’en as dawneth the day And the warrior's wild words by remembrance were blest, " Away--to the mountain-away!". Let us go, lassie, go To the braes o' Balquhither, Where the blae-berries grow 'Mang the bonny Highland leather ; Where the deer and the rae, Lightly bounding together, Sport the lang summer day On the braes o' Balquhither. 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. |