Ossian Collection > Poems of Ossian

IH A PlUCLIMIXAliY OlSCOrUSE.
the moon, without strength, goes from the sky,
hiding herself under a wave in the west. Thou
art in thy journey alone j who is so hold as to
come nigh thee ? The oak falleth from the high
mountain ; the rock and the precipice fall un-
der old age ; the ocean ehbeth and fioweth, the
moon is lost above in the sky ; but thou alone
for ever in victory, in the rejoicing of thy own
light. When the storm darkeneth around the
world, with fierce thunder, and piercing light-
nings, thou lookest in thy beauty from the noise,
smiling in the troubled sky ! To me is thy
light in vain, as I can never see thy counte-
nance ; though thy yellow golden locks are
spread on the face of the clouds in the east ;
or when thou tremblest in the west, at thy
dusky doors in the ocean. Perhaps thou and
myself are at one time mighty, at another fee-
ble, our years sliding down from the skies,
quickly travelling together to their end. Re-
joice then, O sun ! while thou ait strong, O
king ! in thy youth. Dark and unpleasant is
old age, like the vain and feeble light of the
moon, while she looks through a cloud on the
iield, and her gray mist on the sides of the
rocks ; a blast from the north on the plain, a
traveller in distress, and he slow.'
The comparison may be made, by turnins: to
the end of Mr. Macpherson's version of 'C«j--
thon,^ begitming ' O thou that rollest above'
But it must not be concealed, that after all
the exertions of the Committee, it has not been
able to obtain any one poem, the same in title
and tenor with the poems published by him.
We therefore feel that the reader of 'Ossian's
Poems.' UMid grounds more relative l)e produ-
ced, will often, in the perusal of Mr. JM.'s trans-
lations, be induced, with some show of justice,
to exclaim with him, wlici; he luokcd over the