Ossian Collection > Aspects of poetry

27^ THE POETRY OF THE [iX.
And the stars conceal their path;
The moon, all pale, forsakes the sky,
To hide herself in the western wave ;
Thou, in thy journey, art alone ;
Who will dare draw nigh to thee ?
The oak falls from the lofty crag ;
The rock falls in crumbling decay ;
Ebbs and flows the ocean ;
The moon is lost aloft in the heaven ;
Thou alone dost triumph evermore.
In gladness of light all thine own.
When tempest blackens round the world,
In fierce thunder and dreadful lightning,
Thou, in thy beauty, lookest forth on the storm.
Laughing mid the uproar of the skies.
To me thy light is vain.
Never more shall I see thy face.
Spreading thy waving golden-yellow hair,
In the east on the face of the clouds.
Nor when thou tremblest in the west,
At thy dusky doors, on the ocean.
And perchance thou art even as I,
At seasons strong, at seasons without strength,
Our years, descending from the sky.
Together hasting to their close.
Joy be upon thee then, O sun !
Since, in thy youth, thou art strong, O chief.'
This hymn to the Sun marks the highest pitch reached
by the Ossianic poetry ; if I may venture to say so, only
a httle below the description of the sun in the 19th
Psalm.
That sensitiveness to the powers of nature said to be