Classic Poem

Prologue to Gaul.

How mournful is the silence of Night
When she pours her dark clouds over the valleys!
Sleep has overcome the youth of the chase:
He slumbers on the heath; and his dog at his knee.
The children of the mountain he pursues
In his dream, while sleep forsakes him.

Slumber, ye children of fatigue;
Star after star is now ascending the height.
Slumber! thou swift dog and nimble, —
Ossian will arouse thee not from thy repose.
Lonely I keep watch, —
And dear to me is the gloom of night
When I travel from glen to glen,
With no hope to behold a morning or brightness.

Spare thy light, O Sun!
Waste not thy lamps so fast.
Generous is thy soul, as the King of Morven's:
But thy renown shall yet fade; —
Spare thy lamps of a thousand flames
In thy blue hall, when thou retirest
Under thy dark-blue gates to sleep,
Beneath the dark embraces of the storm.
Spare them, ere thou art forsaken for ever,
As I am, without one whom I may love!
Spare them, — for there is not a hero now
To behold the blue flame of the beautiful lamps!

Ah, Cona of the precious lights,
Thy lamps burn dimly now:
Thou art like a blasted oak:
Thy dwellings and thy people are gone
East or west, on the face of thy mountain,
There shall no more be found of them but the trace!
In Selma, Tara, or Temora
There is not a song, a shell, or a harp;
They have all become green mounds;
Their stones have fallen into their own meadows;
The stranger from the deep or the desert
Will never behold them rise above the clouds.

And, O Selma! home of my delight,
Is this heap my ruin,
Where grows the thistle, the heather, and the wild grass?