James Montgomery

  • There is a land, of every land the pride,
    Beloved by Heaven o’er all the world beside,
    Where brighter suns dispense serener light,
    And milder moons imparadise the night;
    A land of beauty, virtue, valor, truth,
    Time-tutored age, and love-exalted youth:...

  • [Battle of Sempach, fourteenth century]

      “MAKE way for Liberty!”—he cried;
    Made way for Liberty, and died!
      In arms the Austrian phalanx stood,
    A living wall, a human wood!
    A wall, where every conscious stone
    Seemed to its kindred thousands grown...

  • From “The Pelican Island”
                                EVERY one,
    By instinct taught, performed its little task,—
    To build its dwelling and its sepulchre,
    From its own essence exquisitely modelled;
    There breed, and die, and leave a progeny,
    Still...

  • From “The Pelican Island”
    —BIRDS, the free tenants of land, air, and ocean,
    Their forms all symmetry, their motions grace;
    In plumage, delicate and beautiful,
    Thick without burden, close as fishes’ scales,
    Or loose as full-grown poppies to the breeze;...

  •   FOREVER with the Lord!
      Amen! so let it be!
    Life from the dead is in that word,
      And immortality.

      Here in the body pent,
      Absent from him I roam,
    Yet nightly pitch my moving tent
      A day’s march nearer home.

      My Father’s...

  • The Bird that soars on highest wing
      Builds on the ground her lowly nest;
    And she that doth most sweetly sing
      Sings in the shade, where all things rest;
    In lark and nightingale we see
    What honor hath humility.

    When Mary chose “the better part...

  • Prayer is the soul’s sincere desire,
      Uttered or unexpressed—
    The motion of a hidden fire
      That trembles in the breast.

    Prayer is the burthen of a sigh,
      The falling of a tear—
    The upward glancing of an eye,
      When none but God is near...

  • Friend after friend departs:
      Who hath not lost a friend?
    There is no union here of hearts
      That finds not here an end;
    Were this frail world our only rest,
    Living or dying, none were blest.

    Beyond the flight of time,
      Beyond this vale...

  • Vase un amigo, y otro, y otro luégo:
     No hay vínculo suave
    Que en esta vida, ajena de sosiego,
     Con el morir no acabe.
    Si aquí tuviese término el camino,
    Fuera...

  • La oración es voz del alma,
     Ya palabras lleve ó nó,
    De una llama que arde oculta
     Generosa vibración.

    Un suspiro que se exhala,
    ...