Ossian Collection > Ossian, his principal poems

je .Song.s d Stlina.
Hail ! star of soft descending night !
Whose rays the glimmering west illume,
Dispelling with thy chastened light,
The evening's murky gloom ;
Fair is thy light, when from the cloud
That casts o'er thy fair face its shroud.
Thou shoot' st thy gentle Beams ;
When all is silent, calm, and still,
And o'er the distant misty hill,
Thy silvery radiance gleams.
Say, lovely planet, what dost thou l>cliold,
When from the clouds thy brilliant rays unfold ?
* This poem has been suggested from a custom which prevailed iu
early times in the north of Scotland, and in Ireland. The bards, at
an annual feast provided by the king or chief, repeated their
poems, and such of them as were thought, by him, worthy of being
preserved, were carefully taught to their children, in order to have
them transmitted to posterity. The address to the evening star,
with which it opens, has, in the origmal, all the harmony that
numbers could give it, flowing down with all that tranquiUty and
softness which the scene described naturally mspircs.