“Oh! never did the dark-soul’d Atheist stand,
And watch the breakers boiling on the strand,
And, while Creation stagger’d at his nod,
Mock the dread presence of the mighty God!
We hear Him in the wind-heaved ocean’s roar,
Hurling her billowy crags upon the shore;
We hear Him in the riot of the blast,
And shake, while rush the raving whirlwinds past!”
If Mr. Robert Montgomery’s genius were not far too free and aspiring to
be shackled by the rules of syntax, we should suppose that it is at the
nod of the Atheist that creation staggers. But Mr. Robert Montgomery’s
readers must take such grammar as they can get, and be thankful.
A few more lines bring us to another instance of unprofitable theft. Sir
Walter Scott has these lines in the Lord of the Isles:
“The dew that on the violet lie?
Mocks the dark lustre of thine eyes.”
This is pretty taken separately, and, as is always the case with the
good things of good writers, much prettier in its place than can even
be conceived by those who see it only detached from the context. Now for
Mr. Montgomery:
“And the bright dew-bead on the bramble lies,