Ossian Collection > Poems of Ossian

302 O S S I A N
turned from him ; he saw the maid, but was not seen.
His soul poured forth, in secret, when he beheld
her tearful eye. " But battle is before thee, son of
Borbar-duthul."
Amidst the harp, at intervals, she listened whether
the warrior slept. Her soul was up ; she longed, in
secret, to pour her own sad song. The field is silent.
On their wings the blasts of night retire. The bards
had ceased ; and meteors came, red-winding with their
ghosts. The sky grew dark : the forms of the dead
were blended with the clouds. But heedless bends the
daughter of Conmor, over the decaying flame. Thou
wert alone in her soul, car-borne chief of Atha. She
raised the voice of the song, and touched the harp
between.
"Clun-galo* came; she missed the maid. Where art
thou, beam of Hght ? Hunters, from the mossy rock,
saw ye the blue-eyed fair? Are her steps on grassy
Lumon ; near the bed of roes ? Ah, me ! I behold her
bow in the hall. Where art thou, beam of light ? "
"Cease,t love of Conmor, cease; I hear thee not on
the ridgy heath. My eye is turned to the king, whose
path is terrible in war. He for whom my soul is up in
the season of my rest. Deep-bosomed in war he stands,
he beholds me not from his cloud. Why, sun of Sul-
malla, dost thou not look forth? I dwell in darkness
here ; wide over me flies the shadowy, mist. Filled with
dew are my locks : look thou from thy cloud, O sun
of Sul-malla's soul 1 "
* Clun-galo, the wife of Conmor king of Inis-huna, and the
mother of Sul-malla. She is here represented as missing her
daughter after she had fled with Cathmor.
t Sul-malla replies to the supposed questions of her mother.
Towards the middle of this paragraph she calls Cathmor the sun
of her soul, and continues the metaphor throughout. This book
ends, we may suppose, about the middle of the third night from
the opening of the poem.