at the flowers of poetry may be brought
from afar, nor yet be felt to be exotics--to intertwine with the very
simplest domestic feelings and thoughts--so simple, so perfectly human,
that there is a touch of surprise on seeing them capable of such
adornment, and more than a touch of pleasure on feeling how much that
adornment becomes them--brightening without changing, and adding
admiration to delight--wonder to love.

Montgomery, too, is almost as much of an egotist as Wordsworth; and
thence, frequently, his power. The poet who keeps all the appearances of
external nature, and even all the passions of humanity, at arm's length,
that he may gaze on, inspect, study, and draw their portraits, either in
the garb they ordinarily wear, or in a fancy dress, is likely to produce
a strong likeness indeed; yet shall his pictures be wanting in ease and
freedom--they shall be cold and stiff--and both passion and imagination
shall desiderate something characteristic in nature, of the mountain or
the man. But the poet who hugs to his bosom everything he loves or
admires--themselves, or the thoughts that are their shadows--who is
himself still the centre of the enchanted circle--who, in the delusion
of a strong creative genius, absolutely believes that were he to die,
all that he now sees and hears delighted would die with him--who not
only sees

"Poetic visions swarm on every bough,"

but the history of all his own most secret emotions written on the very
rocks--who gathers up the many beautiful things that in the prodigality
of nature lie scattered over the earth, neglected or unheeded, and the
more dearly, the more passionately loves them, because they are now
appropriated to the uses of his own imagination, who will by her alchymy
so further brighten them that the thousands of eyes that formerly passed
them by unseen or scorned, will be dazzled by their rare and
transcendent beauty--he is the "prevailing Poet!" Montgomery neither
seeks nor shuns those dark thoughts that will come and go, night and
day, unbidden, forbidden, across the minds of all men--fortified
although the main entrances may be; but when they do invade his secret,
solitary hours, he turns even such visitants to a happy account, and
questions them, ghost-like as they are, concerning both the future and
the past. Melancholy as often his views are, we should not suppose him a
man of other than a cheerful mind; for whenever the theme allows or
demands it, he i