Ossian Collection > Poems of Ossian

CARTHON. 199
•where is thy dwelling in the wind 1 Has the youth
forgot his wound ? Flies he on clouds with thee ? I
feel the sun, Malvina ! leave me to my rest. Per-
haps they may come to my dreams ; I think I hear a
feeble Toice! The beam of heaven delights to shine on
the grave of Carthon : I feel it warm around!
O thou that roUest 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
■ mountcins 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 morn-
ing. Exult then, 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
f midst of his journey.