Fierce through the air, and flutter on the deep.
Till from their caverns rush the maniac blasts,
Tear the loose sails, and split the creaking masts,
And the lash’d billows, rolling in a train,
Rear their white heads, and race along the main!”
What, we should like to know, is the difference between the two
operations which Mr. Robert Montgomery so accurately distinguishes from
each other, the fierce sweeping of the tempest-spirits through the air,
and the rushing of the maniac blasts from their caverns? And why does
the former operation end exactly when the latter commences?
We cannot stop over each of Mr. Robert Montgomery’s descriptions. We
have a shipwrecked sailor, who “visions a viewless temple in the air;”
a murderer who stands on a heath, “with ashy lips, in cold convulsion
spread;” a pious man, to whom, as he lies in bed at night,
“The panorama of past life appears,