Ossian Collection > Poems of Ossian, the son of Fingal > Volume 2

40 CARRIC-THURA :
my eyes behold him not. I met him, one day, oa
the hill; his cheek was pale; his brow was dark. The
sigh was frequent in his breast : his steps were towards
the desert. But now he is not in the crowd of ray
chiefs, when the sounds of my shields arise. Dwells he
iadie narrow house*", the chief of high Carmoras ?
Cronnan ! said UUin of other times, raise the song of
Shilric ; v/hen he returned to his hills, and Vinvela was
no more. He leaned on her grey mossy stone ; he
thought Vinvela lived. He saw her fair>raoving h on
the plain : but the bright form lasted not : the sun-
beam iled from the field, and she was seen no more.
Hear the song of Shilric ; it is soft, but sad.
I sit by the mossy fountain ; on the top of the hill of
v/inds. One tree is rustling above me. Dark waves
roll over the heath. The lake is troubled below. The
deer descend from the hill. No hunter at a distance is
seen ; no whistling cow-lierd is nigh. It is mid-day:
but all is silent. Sad are my dioughts alone. Didst
thou but appear, O my love, a wanderer on the heath !
thy hair floating on the wind behind thee : thy bosom
heaving on the siglit ; thine eyes full of tears for thy
friends, whom the mist of the hill had concealed !
Thee I would comfort, my love, ajid bring thee to thy
father's house.
But is it she that there appears, like a beam of light
on the heath ? bright as the moon in autumn, as the
sun in a summer storm, comest thou lovely maid, over
rocks, over mountains to me ? She spCaks : but how
weak her voice, like the breeze in the reeds of the pool.
" Returnest thou safe from the w.ir? Where are thy
friends, my love ? I heard of thy death on the hill ; I
heard and mourned thee, Shilric !'* Yes, my fair, I re-?
f Tlie grave.
g Carn-inor. ' high rocky hill.'
h '[he distinction, vvliich the'ancJent Scots made between good and!. 1
bad spirits, was, that tlie former appeared iometimesin the daytimie'
in lonely unfrequented places, but the latter seldom but by oigbt^, ,
aiul always in a Jii.mal gloomy scene.