No More Learning

"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 thee,
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 north is on the
plain; the traveller shrinks in the midst of his journey. "


_II. --Darthula_

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! 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 Cairbar of Erin. Who is
that, dim, by their side? The night has covered her beauty! Who is it
but Darthula, the first of Erin's maids? She has fled from the love
of Caribar, with blue-shielded Nathos. But the winds deceive thee, O
Darthula! They deny the woody Etha to thy sails.