I feel the sun, O Malvina!--leave me to my rest. Perhaps
they may come to my dreams; I think I hear a feeble voice!
The beam of heaven delights to shine on the grave of
Carthon: I feel it warm around.
O thou that rollest 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
mountains 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
morning. Exult then, O 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 midst of his journey.