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THE SELECTOR; AND LITERARY NOTICES OF NEW WORKS.

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THE MESSIAH.

By Robert Montgomery.

The subsequent passages exhibit many of the beauties and few of the blemishes of Mr. Montgomery’s new poem: 

THE WILDERNESS.

  Oh, when hath mind conceived
  Magnificence beyond a midnight there,
  When Israel camp’d, and o’er her tented host
  The moonlight lay?—­On yonder palmy mount,
  Lo! sleeping myriads in the dewy hush
  Of night repose; around in squared array,
  The camps are set; and in the midst, apart,
  The curtain’d shrine, where mystically dwells
  Jehovah’s presence!—­through the soundless air
  A cloudy pillar, robed in burning light,
  Appears:—­concenter’d as one mighty heart,
  A million lie, in mutest slumber bound. 
  Or, panting like the ocean, when a dream
  Of storm awakes her:—­Heaven and Earth are still;
  In radiant loveliness the stars pursue
  Their pilgrimage, while moonlight’s wizard hand
  Throws beauty, like a spectre light, on all. 
  At Judah’s tent the lion-banner stands
  Unfolded, and the pacing sentinels,—­
  What awe pervades them, when the dusky groves,
  The rocks Titanian, by the moonshine made
  Unearthly, or yon mountains vast, they view! 
  But soon as morning bids the sky exult,
  As earth from nothing, so that countless host
  From slumber and from silence will awake
  To mighty being! while the forest-birds
  Rush into song, the matin breezes play,
  And streamlets flash where prying sunbeams fall: 
  Like clouds in lustre, banners will unroll! 
  The trumpet shout, the warlike tramp resound,
  And hymns of valour from the marching tribes
  Ascend to gratulate the risen morn.

PATRIARCHAL TIMES.

  A vision of that unforgotten prime,
  The patriarchal age, when Earth was young,
  A while oh:  let it linger!—­oh the soul
  It breaketh, like a lovely burst of spring
  Upon the gaze of captives, when the clouds
  Again are floating over freedom’s head!—­
  Though Sin had witherd with a charnel breath
  Creation’s morning bloom, there still remain’d
  Elysian hues of that Adamic scene,
  When the Sun gloried o’er a sinless world,
  And with each ray produced a flower!—­From dells
  Untrodden, hark! the breezy carol comes
  Upwafted, with the chant of radiant birds.—­
  What meadows, bathed in greenest light, and woods
  Gigantic, towering from the skiey hills,
  And od’rous trees in prodigal array,
  With all the elements divinely calm—­
  Our fancy pictures on the infant globe! 
  And ah! how godlike, with imperial brow
  Benignly grave, yon patriarchal forms
  Tread the free earth, and eye the naked