kindles so many
little heart-burnings and jealousies, that we rejoice it is not part of
our duty. To be sure, we sometimes take up a book in real earnest, read
it through, and have _our say_ upon its merits; but this is only a
gratuitous and occasional freak, just to keep up our oracular
consequence. In the present case, we do not feel disposed to exercise
this privilege, further than in a very few words--merely to say that Mr.
Robert Montgomery has published a volume of Poems under the above
title--that the poems are of unequal merit, and that like Virgil, his
excellence lies in describing scenes of darkness.

The "Universal Prayer" is a devotional outpouring of a truly poetical
soul, with as much new imagery as the subject would admit; and if
_scriptural_ poems be estimated in the ratio of _scriptural_ sermons,
the merit of the former is of the first order.[2]

From the other poems we have detached the following beautiful
specimens:--

CONSUMPTION.

With step as noiseless as the summer air,
Who comes in beautiful decay?--her eyes
Dissolving with a feverish glow of light,
Her nostrils delicately closed, and on
Her cheek a rosy tint, as if the tip
Of Beauty's finger faintly press'd it there,--
Alas! Consumption is her name.
Thou loved and loving one!
From the dark languish of thy liquid eye,
So exquisitely rounded, darts a ray
Of truth, prophetic of thine early doom;
And on thy placid cheek there is a print
Of death,--the beauty of consumption there.
Few note that fatal bloom; for bless'd by all,
Thou movest through thy noiseless sphere, the life,
Of one,--the darling of a thousand hearts.
Yet in the chamber, o'er some graceful task
When delicately bending, oft unseen,
Thy mother marks then with that musing glance
That looks through cunning time, and sees thee stretch'd
A shade of being, shrouded for the tomb.
The Day is come, led gently on by Death;
With pillow'd head all gracefully reclined,
And grape-like curls in languid clusters wreath'd,
Within a cottage room she sits to die;
Where from the window, in a western view,
Majestic ocean rolls.--A summer eve
Shines o'er the earth, and all the glowing air
Stirs faintly, like a pulse; against the shore
The waves unrol them with luxurious joy,
While o'er the midway deep she looks, where like
A sea god glares the everlasting Sun
O'er troops of billows marching in his beam!--
From earth to