The poetical works of James Montgomery, with a memoir - Softcover

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1881 edition. Excerpt: ...d dart, From hand to hand, impaling heart for heart; Till spent their missiles; quick as in a dream The images are changed, across the stream The Skraellings rush'd, the precipices scaled, O'erwhelm'd by multitudes the Normans fail'd. CANTO FIFTH. The Depopulation of the Norwegian Colonies on the eastern coast of Greenland, and the abandonment of intercourse with it from Europe, in consequence of the increase of the Arctic Ices, about the beginning of the Fifteenth Century. Launch on the gulf, my little Greenland bark! Bear me through scenes unutterably dark--Scenes with the mystery of Nature seal'd, Nor till the day of doom to be reveal'd. What though the Spirits of the arctic gales Freeze round thy prow, or fight against thy sails, Safe as Arion, whom the dolphin bore, Enamour'd of his music, to the shore, On thee adventuring o'er an unknown main, I raise to warring elements a strain Of kindred harmony:--O lend your breath, Ye tempests! while I sing this reign of death, Utter dark sayings of the days of old, In parables upon my harp unfold Deeds perish'd from remembrance; truth, array'd. Like heaven by night, in emblematic shade, When shines the horoscope, and star on star, By what they are not lead to what they are; Atoms, that twinkle in an infant's eye, Are worlds, suns, systems in the unbounded sky: Thus the few fabled woes my strains create Are hieroglyphics in a book of fate, And while the shadowy symbols I unroll Imagination reads a direr scroll. Wake, ye wild visions! o'er the northern deep, On clouds and winds, like warrior-spectres sweep; Show by what plagues and hurricanes destroy' d, A breathing realm became a torpid void. The floods are raging, and the gales blow high, Low as a dungeon-roof impends the sky; Prisoners of hope,...