Galic Antiquities

156 GAUL:
Evirchoma * returns to Strumon's halls ;
but her fleps are flow,
and her face is fad. She is like a lonely ghoft in a calm, when he
walks in the mift of the pool, and the wind of hills is filent. Often
flie looks back, in the midfl of her fighs, and tiirns her tearful
eye towards Ocean.
" Safe be thy courfe, rider of the foamy deep
when lliall I again behold thee !"
Night with all her murky darknefs met the fon of Morni in the
midft of his courfe. The dim moon hid herfelf in the caves of
clouds, and no ftar looked out from the windows of the Iky.
His bark in filence rides the deep :
and, in our courfe, we mifs the
chief,
as hoineward we bound to Morven.
Ifrona hides itfelf in the morning mift.
The ftep of Gaul is
carelefs on its fhore : he w^onders he does not hear the roar of
battle. He ftrikes his fhield, that his friends may know of his
coming. " Does Fingal," he fays, " fleep ; and the battle unfought ?
Heroes of Morven, arc you here?"
O THAT we had ! Then
had this fpear defended thee from the
foe ; or low had its owner fallen. No harmlefs flafF, the prop of
tottering years, was then Temora's fpear. It was the lightning
that overturns the lofty trees in ics red-winged courfe, when the
mountains tremble before it.
OfTian was then no blafted tree that
ftands alone on the heath, fliaking before every breeze, and halfbent
over the ftream by wintry ftorms. No ; I ftood like the pine
of Cona, with all my green branches about me, fmihng at the
ftorm of heaven, and tofhng themfelves with joy in the roar ol:
wiiids.
• Aoibhir-chdomha, " mi!d and ftately,"
3^' ^oo'' of Temora, and fome other of Ofthe
wife of G^ul, and daughter oi Cafdu-
'"'-•'"'s poems.
conolas. Mention is made of hct in the t ' ^'^'"