While mist and spray, condens'd to sudden dews,
The air illumine with celestial hues,

As if the bounteous sun were raining down

The richest gems of his imperial crown.

We are sorry we cannot finish this highly wrought description, which, we trust, will sufficiently vindicate Mr. Montgo

mery's claim to a considerable degree of power in the higher walks of descriptive poetry. The following, however, is in style more peculiarly his own, and a very exquisite example of the manner in which he takes up one of the common feelings of human nature, and extracts its' sweetness.

"A mother's love how sweet the name !
What is a mother's love?

A noble, pure, and tender flame
Enkindled from above,

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To bless a heart of earthly mould
The warmest love that can grow cold;
This is a mother's love.

"To bring a helpless babe to light,
Then, while it lies forlorn,
To gaze upon that dearest sight,
And feel herself new-born;
In its existence lose her own
And live and breathe in it alone;
This is a mother's love.

"Its weakness in her arms to bear ;
To cherish on her breast;

Feed it from love's own fountain there,
And lull it there to rest;

Then while it slumbers watch its breath,
As if to guard from instant death;
This is a mother's love.

"To mark its growth from day to day,
Its opening charms admire,

Catch frem its eye the earliest ray
Of intellectual fire;

To smile and listen while it talks,
And lend a finger when it walks;
This is a mother's love."

This is certainly as full of gentle, amiable feeling as it can be. But we could, we think, had we space, select for our reader's admiration passages from among the other minor poems of our author still more exquisite, and more strongly exemplifying

our observation on this feature of his writings. But we must hasten to the present production of Mr. Montgomery, which, we have been informed, has employed him for the last seven or eight years, and is the only publication of any consequence he has given us during that time to prove he has not broken his lyre.

"The Pelican Island" is the first production of our author we remember to have seen in blank verse; and is in this circumstance alone a curious exemplification of what we have said on the effect which time has had in forming his manner. It could hardly have been imagined that the writer of the little dapper poem, "The Wanderer in Switzerland," remarkable for its tame and uniform verse, should at length become the author of a poem composed in a measure depending entirely on the variety of rhythmical modulation for the effect of its verse, and for its general interest on its pure intellectual excellence, independent of either narrative or change of interest. But we are anticipating; and we must hasten to give our readers a more distinct idea of this poem, which claims our respect and attention more particularly from the time which has been employed in its completion. The Pelican Island consists of nine cantos; and owes its origin, the author informs us, to a circumstance mentioned in Captain Flinders's Voyage to New South Wales. In some of the gulfs on the coast of this country there are, it appears, several small islands, on two of which Captain Flinders found great quantities of pelicans, some not yet fledged, and others in the last stage of their existence. From a large quantity of their bones and skeletons, which were also observed there, he conjectures that those lonely and distant spots had for centuries been chosen by these mysterious birds as their final resting-place. Another foundation for the poem is the curious phenomena attending the formation of a coral reef, than which nothing in nature is more remarkable. That myriads of little reptiles, whose existence as living things it is sometimes impossible to discover, should be incessantly employed beneath the waves in erecting a solid barrier to the sea; that their work should at length rise into an island, which the unseen catastrophies of the ocean are to clothe with verdure; and that, after a series of ages, many of these worm-built castles on the deep become the abodes of animals and of man ;-nothing, certainly, could be better fitted for the poet's purpose than these circumstances, or be more calculated to fill the mind with the strange wonders of nature. On these two facts depend the whole of the "Pelican Island;" and it is now to be seen what use our author has made of them. The reader of this poem must be prepared for a little

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mysticism, both in its design and progress; but it is a mysticism of so beautiful a kind, and so accommodated to many of our natural feelings, that we are perfectly ready to grant the author his request, of being ourselves" spectator, actor, thinker, in his masquerade of truth."

Imagining ourselves, then, to have had an existence out of the body, and one, therefore, to which time was as nothing; and retaining a memory of the mighty changes which passed before us in that state, we shall be in the situation of the imaginary being who relates the events of the poem.

Sky, sun, and sea were all the universe;
The sky, one blue, interminable arch,
Without a breeze, a wing, a cloud; the
Sole in the firmament, but in the deep
Redoubled; where the circle of the sea,
Invisible with calmness, seem'd to lie
Within the hollow of a lower heaven.

Such was the state of things, when the being whom we have mentioned existed" sole in the universe."

I was a spirit in the midst of these,

All eye, ear, thought; existence was enjoyment;
Light was an element of life, and air
The clothing of my incorporeal form,—
A form impalpable to mortal touch,
And volatile as fragrance from the flower,
Or music in the woodlands. What the soul
Can make itself at pleasure, that I was,—
A child in feeling, and imagination,
Learning new lessons still, as nature wrought
Her wonders in my presence. All I saw,
(Like Adam when he walk'd in Paradise,)
I knew and nam'd by secret intuition.
Actor, spectator, sufferer, each in turn,
I ranged, explored, reflected. Now I sail'd
And now I soar'd; anon expanding, seem'd
Diffused into immensity, yet bound
Within a space too narrow for desire;

The mind, the mind perpetual themes must task,
Perpetual power impel, and hope allure.

I and the silent sun were here alone,

But not companions; high and bright he held
His course; I gazed with admiration on him-
There all communion ended; and I sigh'd,
In loneliness unutterable sigh'd,

To feel myself a wanderer without aim,
An exile amid splendid desolation,
A prisoner with infinity surrounded.

pp. 2, 3.

There is something in the passage which follows, very nearly resembling Adam's account of his first sensation of existence; but more especially that most ingeniously imagined description,

which Buffon has given, of a supposed human being created with his faculties in perfection, and contemplating for the first time the wonders of creation. The whole of the first canto is taken up with a description of inanimate nature, if so it may be called, while undergoing the splendid vicissitudes of day showering down light from her visible fountains, and night with its mysteries of shadowy reality. Our author has described the whole with great magnificence of language, and a depth of thought that gives existence to the scene. In the second canto commences the history of the island; and we have an account of its formation that might amuse the least ardent lover of natural wonders. This is followed by a description of its progressive approaches to fertility, and its subsequent luxury of verdure. The fearful convulsion of storm and whirlwind, that afterwards tore up its surface, is finely painted; and, with his usual felicity, the author has heightened its natural sublimity by an appeal to human feeling, and by mixing up with it the terrible images of horror-struck despair. This event is succeeded by the calm of renovating nature, and the account by an equally beautiful description of the state of the island when its wild and rank luxuriousness had given way to the soft verdant loveliness of the flowery landscape. But we now approach the most important epoch of the story, the period when the pelicans first arrived on its shores, and laid the foundation of the little colony whose history would outlast one of many more times repeated generations of mankind. It was just as the evening sun had set below the horizon, that

Far in the east, through heaven's intenser blue,
Two brilliant sparks, like sudden stars, appear'd;
Not stars indeed, but birds of mighty wing,
Retorted neck, and javelin-pointed bill,
That made the air sigh as they cut it through.
They gain'd upon the eye, and as they came,
Enlarged, grew brighter, and display'd their forms
Amidst the golden evening; pearly white,
But ruby-tinctur'd. On the loftiest cliff

They settled, hovering ere they touch'd the ground,
And uttering, in a language of their own,

Yet such as every ear might understand,

And every bosom answer notes of joy,

And gratulation for that resting-place.
Stately and beautiful they stood, and clapt

Their fair broad pinions, streak'd their ruffled plumes,
And ever and anon broke off to gaze,

With yearning pleasure, told in gentle murmurs,
On that strange land, their destined home and country.
Night round them threw her brown transparent gloom,
Through which their lovely images yet shone,

Like things unearthly, while they bow'd their heads
On their full bosoms, and reposed till morn.
I knew the Pelicans, and cried“ All hail !
Ye future dwellers in the wilderness!"

Having thus introduced these winged inhabitants of the original island, the poem again turns to the coral-architects," who, rearing fabric after fabric, at length form a little cluster of islands, which in progress of time become filled with every variety of birds, from the small bright humming-bird to the "fierce sea-eagle," and the "cormorant, death's living arrow."

But, weary with the contemplation of irrational nature, and, though a spirit, still human, the observer of all these various scenes sighs for communion with beings more like itself, and possessing qualities and principles higher than those which are merely animal. And, while observing the regular revolutions taking place in the course of things, yet always ending where they began, and producing no order of higher existences, he doubts whether nature has not expended her energies, and proceeded to her utmost limits; or whether a period may not come when, island uniting with island, all may become earth, and

-Ocean in his own abyss absorb'd.

Even while thus brooding on what may be the future condition of the universe, the change he was imagining took place: his "thoughts fulfilled themselves;" and, the island shores collapsing, the vast basin of the sea became dry land. The description which follows is very beautiful, and highly creditable to the poetic eye and susceptibilities of the writer: none but a highly gifted mind could have conceived it, or so exquisitely have painted the change which the face of nature had undergone, from the gay, smiling features of an island prospect, to the deep and calmly beautiful land-scenes of a continent.

In this altered theatre of existence, new and widely different objects present themselves for observation. The seat of the aged pelicans is gone, and the wild animals of the cave and the forest supply their place in the attention of the lonely being, who still remains unchanged. But these, no more than the other animals with whom he had shared creation, satisfied his heart; and, at length, by some mysterious power he was carried onwards through the wide limits of the earth, and in its eastern boundary beheld the vestiges of human life. But it was humanity in its lowest stages-humanity more in the form which it gave a name to, than in its essential presence. Again, then, onward in the awful procession of countless ages, this disembodied inhabitant of the earth still finds himself alone, and still left to contemplate these endless revolutions of existence. We