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النشر الإلكتروني

DAR-THULA:

A POEM.

DAUGHTER of heaven', fair art thou! the silence of thy face is pleasant! Thou comest forth in loveliness. The stars attend thy blue course in the east. The clouds rejoice in thy presence, O moon: They brighten with darkbrown sides. Who is like thee in heaven, light

1 Daughter of heaven, fair art thou! the silence of thy face is pleasant.] "Behold thou art fair my beloved, yea pleasant.” Song of Solomon, i. 16.

The

2 The silence of thy face is pleasant! Thou comest forth in loveliness. The stars attend thy blue course in the east. clouds rejoice in thy presence, O moon: They brighten their dark-brown sides.] Par. Lost, iv. 601.

leave thy blue path in heaven. The stars will then lift their heads: they, who were ashamed in thy presence, will rejoice. Thou art now clothed with thy brightness. Look from thy gates in the sky. Burst the cloud, O wind, that the daughter of night may look forth! that the shaggy mountains may brighten, and the ocean roll its white waves, in light.

Nathos is on the deep, and Althos, that beam of youth. Ardan is near his brothers. They move in the gloom of their course. The sons of Usnoth move in darkness, from the wrath of

darkness of her countenance grows, she retires from her course. But his years will have an end; the sun of heaven shall fail; and the daughter of heaven shall fail one night: from the same passage in the Rape of the Lock. Such are the eternal repetitions in Ossian; but the praise of Sulpitia cannot always be applied to the Celtic muse.

Talis in æterno felix Vertumnus Olympo

Mille habet ornatus, mille decenter habet.

8 Burst the cloud, O wind !—that the shaggy mountains may brighten, and the ocean roll its white wave in light.] Lora, 9. Iliad, viii. 553.

Εκ τ ̓ ἔφανον πᾶσαι ΣΚΟΠΙΑΙ, καὶ πρώονες ΑΚΡΑΙ,
Καὶ νάπαι· οὐρανόθεν δ ̓ ἄρ ̓ ΥΠΕΡΡΑΓΗ ἄσπετος αἰθὴς,
O'er the dark trees a yellower verdure shed,

And tip with silver every mountain's head;
Then shine the vales, the rocks in prospect rise,

A flood of glory bursts from all the skies.

POPE.

Cairbar of Erin. Who is that dim, by their side? the night has covered her beauty! Her hair sighs on ocean's wind. Her robe streams in dusky wreaths. She is, like the fair spirit of heaven, in the midst of his shadowy mist'. Who is it but Dar-thula, the first of Erin's maids? She has fled from the love of Cairbar with blueshielded Nathos. But the winds deceive thee, O Dar-thula. They deny the woody Etha, to thy sails. These are not the mountains of Nathos ; nor is that the roar of his climbing The halls of Cairbar are near the towers of the foe lift their heads! Erin stretches its head into the sea. green Tura's bay receives the ship. Where have ye been, ye southern winds! when the sons of my love were de

10

waves.

9 Like the fair spirit of heaven in the midst of her shadowy mist.] Moina's ghost, like the new moon seen through the gathered mist, is here employed as a simile for Dar-thula. Carthon, 17.

10 But the winds deceive thee, O Dar-thula. They deny the woody Etha to thy sails. These are not the mountains of Nathos.] An imitation of Milton's apostrophe to Eve. Par. Lost, ix. 405.

O much deceived, much failing, hapless Eve,
Of thy presumed return event perverse !

Thou never from that hour in Paradise
Found'st either sweet repast or sound repose.

ceived? But ye have been sporting on plains, pursuing the thistle's beard. O that ye had been rustling, in the sails of Nathos", till the

11 Where have ye been, ye southern winds, when the sons of my love were deceived? But ye have been sporting on plains, pursuing the thistle's beard. O that ye had been rustling in the sails of Nathos.] MILTON'S Lycidas.

Where were ye, nymphs, when the remorseless deep
Closed o'er the head of your loved Lycidas?

For neither were you playing on the steep,

Where your old bards, the famous druids, lie,
Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high,

Nor yet where Deva spreads her wizard stream;
Ay me! I fondly dream!

Had ye been there, for what could that have done? The resemblance is such, that even Milton's phraseology is preserved in Ossian. Where were ye, nymphs? and, Where have ye been, ye southern winds? When the deep closed o'er the head of your loved Lycidas; When the sons of my love (whose love?) were deceived. For neither were you playing on the steep, where your old bards: But ye have been sporting on plains, pursuing the thistle's beard. Ay me! had ye been there; O that ye had been rustling in the sails of Nathos.

Blair observes that the apostrophe to the winds is remarkable for the resemblance it bears to an expostulation with the wood nymphs on their absence at a particular time, which, as a favourite poetical idea, Virgil has copied from Theocritus, and Milton has very happily imitated both. If unable, however, to discern in Ossian a common-place imitation of Milton, Blair might at least have suspected that the same apostrophe which Virgil and Milton have copied from Theocritus, and

hills of Etha arose! till they arose in their clouds, and saw their returning chief! Long hast thou been absent, Nathos! The day of thy return is past!

But the land of strangers saw thee, lovely: thou wast lovely in the eyes of Dar-thula. Thy face was like the light of the morning". Thy hair like the raven's wing. Thy soul was generous and mild, like the hour of the setting sun. Thy words were the gale of the reeds; the gliding stream of Lora! But when the rage of battle rose, thou wast a sea in a storm. The clang of thy arms was terrible: the host vanished at the sound of thy course. It was then Dar-thula beheld thee, from the top of her mossy tower: from the tower of Selama, where her fathers dwelt.

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'Lovely art thou, O stranger!" she said, for her trembling soul arose. "Fair art thou in thy battles, friend of the fallen Cormac! Why dost thou rush on, in thy valour, youth of the

Pope from Virgil, could not have occurred to Ossian without imitation.

"And he

Thy face was like the light of the morning.] shall be as the light of the morning." 2 Samuel, xxiii. 4.

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