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which Heaven has framed in the loom of civilized society; while the scattered threads of Fingal's days are like autumnal cobwebs, tossed by winds from thorn to thorn; whence some few of peculiar whiteness are collected by the musing bard, when solitary he roams amid the pathless wild.

III.

TRUE, Ossian, I delight in songs; harmony soothes my soul. It soothes it, O Ossian; but it raises it far above these grassy clouds and rocky hills: it exalts it above the vain phantoms of clouds, the wandering meteors of the night.

Listen in thy turn, thou sad son of Fingal, to the lonely dweller of the rock: let thy harp rest for a while, and thy thoughts cease to retrace the war and bloodshed of the days that are past. Sightless art thou, O Ossian, and sad is thy failing age: thine ear is to the hollow blast, and thy expectation is closed in the narrow house: thy memory is of the deeds of thy fathers-and thy fathers, where are they? What, O Ossian, are those deeds of other times? they are horror, and blood, and desolation.

Harp of Ossian, be still. Why dost thou sound in the blast, and awake my sleeping fancy? Deep and long has been its repose: solid are the walls that surround me: the idle laugh enters not here: why then should the idler tear? Yet, Ossian, I would weep for thee: I would weep for thee, Malvina. But my days are as the flight of an arrow: shall the arrow turn aside from its mark?

Bright was thy genius, Ossian! But darkness was in thy heart; it shrank from the light of heaven. The lonely dweller of the rock sang in vain to thy deafened ear. The Grecian was not blind like thee: on him the true sun never dawned; yet he sang, though erroneous, of all-ruling Providence, and faintly looked up to the parent of gods and men. Thy vivid fancy, O Ossian, what beheld it but a cloudy Fingal? Vain in the pride of ancestry, thou remainest, by choice, an orphan in an orphan world. Did never the dweller of the rock point out to thy friendless age, a kindred higher than the heaven; a brotherhood wide as the world; a staff to thy failing steps; a light to thy sightless soul? And didst thou reject them, Ossian? What then is genius, but a meteor brightness? The humble, the mild, the simple, the uneloquent,' with peaceful steps, followed their welcome pastor into fair meads of everlasting verdure; while thou sittest gloomy on the storm-beaten hill, and repeating to the angry blast the boast of human pride, the tales of devastation, of war-the deeds of other times. Far other times are these. Ah! would they were! for still destruction spreads; still human pride rises with the tigers of the desert, and makes its horrid boast!

ALLEGORIES.

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