Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Volume 3
General
Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Volume 3
English poetry
I feel the sun, O Malvina!--leave me to my rest. Perhaps
they may come to my dreams; I think I hear a feeble voice!
The beam of heaven delights to shine on the grave of
Carthon: I feel it warm around.
O thou that rollest above, round as the shield of my
fathers! Whence are thy beams, O sun! thy everlasting light?
Thou comest forth in thy awful beauty; the stars hide
themselves in the sky; the moon, cold and pale, sinks in the
western wave; but thou thyself movest alone. Who can be a
companion of thy course? The oaks of the mountains fall; the
mountains themselves decay with years; the ocean shrinks and
grows again; the moon herself is lost in heaven, but thou
art for ever the same, rejoicing in the brightness of thy
course. When the world is dark with tempests, when thunder
rolls and lightning flies, thou lookest in thy beauty from
the clouds, and laughest at the storm. But to Ossian thou
lookest in vain, for he beholds thy beams no more; whether
thy yellow hair flows on the eastern clouds, or thou
tremblest at the gates of the west. But thou art perhaps,
like me, for a season; thy years will have an end. Thou
shalt sleep in thy clouds careless of the voice of the
morning. Exult then, O sun, in the strength of thy youth!
Age is dark and unlovely; it is like the glimmering light of
the moon when it shines through broken clouds, and the mist
is on the hills: the blast of the north is on the plain; the
traveller shrinks in the midst of his journey.
DESOLATION OF BALCLUTHA.
I have seen the walls of Balclutha, but they were desolate.
The fire had resounded in the halls; and the voice of the
people is heard no more. The stream of Clutha was removed
from its place by the fall of the walls. The thistle shook
there its lonely head; the moss whistled to the wind. The
fox looked out from the windows; the rank grass of the wall
waved round its head. Desolate is the dwelling of Moina;
silence is in the house of her fathers. Raise the song of
mourning, O bards! over the land of strangers. They have but
fallen before us: for one day we must fall. Why dost thou
build the hall, son of the winged days? Thou lookest from
thy towers to-day: yet a few years, and the blast of the
desert comes; it howls in thy empty court, and whistles
round thy half-worn shield. And let the blast of the desert
come! we shall be renowned in our day! The mark of my arm
shall be in battle; my name in the song of bards. Raise the
song, send round the shell: let joy be heard in my hall.
When thou, sun of heaven, shalt fail! if thou shalt fail,
thou mighty light! if thy brightness is but for a season,
like Fingal, our fame shall survive thy beams. Such was the
song of Fingal in the day of his joy.
FINGAL AND THE SPIRIT OF LODA.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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