Ossian Collection > Poems of Ossian

272 DAR-THULA.
Nathos is on the deep, and Althos, that beam of youth.
Ardan is near his brothers. They move in the glcom
of their course. The sons of Usnoth move in darkness,
from the wrath of Cairbar of Erin. Who is that, dim by
their side. The night has covered her beauty ! Her
hair sighs on ocean's winds. Her robe streams in dusky
wreaths. She is like the fair spirit of heaven in the
midst of his shadowy mist. Who is it but Dar-thula,*
the first of Erin's maids ? She has fled from the love of
Cairbar, with blue-shielded Nathos. But the winds
deceive thee, O Dar-thula ! They deny the woody
Etha, to thy sails. These are not the mountains of
Nathos ; nor is that the roar of his climbing waves.
The halls of Cairbar are near : the towers of the foe lift
their heads ! Erin stretches its green head into the sea.
Tula's bay receives the ship. Where have ye been, ye
southern winds ! when the sons of my love were
deceived? But ye have been sporting on plains,
pursuing the thistle's beard. O that ye had been
rustling in the sails of Nathos, till the hills of Etha
arose ! till they arose in their clouds, and saw their
returning chief ! Long hast thou been absent, Nathos !
the day of thy return is past !
But the land of strangers saw thee, lovely ! thou wast
lovely in the eyes of Dar-thula. Thy face was like the
* Dar-thula, or Dart-'huile, a woman tvlth fine eyes. She waa
the most famous beauty of antiquity. To this day, when a
woman is praised for her beauty, the common phrase is, that
she is as lovely as Dar-thula.