1771–1854

Introduction

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National Portrait Gallery

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Born: No­vem­ber 4, 1771, Ir­vine, Ayr­shire, Scot­land.

Died: Ap­ril 30, 1854, Mount, Shef­field, Eng­land.

Buried: Shef­field Ca­thed­ral, Eng­land. A sta­tue was erect­ed in his me­mo­ry in the Shef­field ce­me­te­ry, a stained glass win­dow was in­stalled in the par­ish church, and a pub­lic hall was named af­ter him.

Pseudonyms

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Biography

When Mont­go­me­ry was five years old, his fa­mi­ly moved to the Mo­ra­vi­an set­tle­ment at Grace­hill, near Bal­ly­me­na, Coun­ty An­trim.

Two years lat­er, he was sent to the Ful­neck Se­mi­na­ry in York­shire. He left Ful­neck in 1787 to work in a shop in Mir­field, near Wake­field. Soon tir­ing of that, he se­cured a si­mi­lar po­si­tion at Wath, near Roth­er­ham, on­ly to find it as un­suit­able as his pre­vi­ous job.

A trip to Lon­don, hop­ing to find a pub­lish­er for his youth­ful po­ems, end­ed in fail­ure. In 1792, he glad­ly left Wath for Shef­field to be as­sist­ant to Mr. Gales, auc­tion­eer, book­sell­er, and print­er of the Shef­field Re­gis­ter.

In 1794, Gales left Eng­land to avoid po­li­tic­al pro­se­cu­tion. Mont­go­me­ry took the Shef­field Re­gis­ter in hand, changed its name to the Shef­field Ir­is, and con­tin­ued to ed­it it for 32 years. Dur­ing the next two years he was im­pri­soned twice, first for re­print­ing a song in com­me­mo­ra­tion of the fall of the Bas­tille, then for giv­ing an ac­count of a ri­ot in Shef­field.

The ed­it­ing of his pa­per, the com­po­si­tion and pub­li­ca­tion of his po­ems and hymns, the de­liv­ery of lec­tures on po­et­ry in Shef­field and at the Roy­al In­sti­tu­tion, Lon­don, and the ad­vo­ca­cy of for­eign mis­sions and the Bi­ble So­ci­ety, gave him great va­ri­ety, but lit­tle of stir­ring in­ci­dent in his life.

However, he did find time to write 400 hymns. In 1833, Mont­go­me­ry re­ceived a roy­al pen­sion of £200 per year.

Works

Poem

Human Life

How few and ev­il are thy days,
Man, of a wo­man born!
Trouble and per­il haunt thy ways—
Forth like a flow­er at morn,
The ten­der in­fant springs to light,
Youth blos­soms with the breeze,
Age, wi­ther­ing age, is cropt ere night—
Man like a sha­dow flees.

And dost Thou look on such an one?
Will God to judg­ment call
A worm, for what a worm hath done
Against the Lord of all?
As fail the wa­ters from the deep,
As sum­mer brooks run dry,
Man li­eth down in dream­less sleep—
Our life is va­ni­ty.

Man li­eth down, no more to wake,
Till yon­der arch­ing sphere
Shall with a roll of thun­der break,
And na­ture dis­ap­pear—
Oh! hide me, till Thy wrath be past,
Thou, who canst kill or save;
Hide me, where hope may an­chor fast,
In my Re­deem­er’s grave.

James Mont­go­me­ry
Greenland, and Oth­er Po­ems, 1819

Sources

Lyrics