University of Virginia Library

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The attribution of this poem is questionable.

OSSIAN'S ADDRESS TO THE SUN IMITATED.

O thou, that roll'st on high thy radiant fires,
Round as the rocky buckler of my sires!
From what pure fountain of ethereal day,
Springs thy full tide, thy everlasting ray?
Thou comest forth, in awful beauty bright,
Thy bashful stars withdraw their twinkling light,
And night's pale planet, by thy beams oppress'd,
Sinks in the twilight chambers of the west;
But thou thyself for ever mov'st alone,
Untrod thy footsteps, and thy path unknown;
For who shall track thee in thy shining sphere,
Wake the sweet day, and measure out the year?
Stretched on their hills, the mountain-oaks decay,
E'en the firm mountains wear with years away;
The restless deep now swells and now subsides,
As ebb her billows, and as flow her tides;
The moon herself, from heaven's blue circle fled,
In twilight shadows hides her lovely head;
But thy full orb, eternally the same,
Glows in its course, perpetual as its flame.
When, dark with tempests, lower the angry skies,
When rolls the thunder, when the light'ning flies,
Thou from thy clouds, in beauty's fairest form,
Lovely look'st forth, and laughest at the storm.
But vain to Ossian breaks thy light away,
He views no more the lustre of thy ray;
Whether on eastern clouds thy yellow hair
Flows steep'd in dew, and waved by summer air,
Or sinking on the billow's purple breast,
Thou tremblest at the portals of the west.
Yet thou perhaps art doomed but for awhile
Like me to flourish,—then to cease thy smile,
Sink in thy dun pavilion to repose,
Nor heed the morn's sweet music as it flows.
Then prize, Ethereal Power! thy golden prime,
For dark and joyless is the night of Time.
'Tis like the moonbeam's cold, unlovely light,
When pale it glimmers through the clouds of night,
Dim on autumnal hills the mists remain,
The northern blast is sweeping o'er the plain;
The traveller eyes the wan, reluctant ray,
He sees the approaching storm, and shrinks upon his way!