To what a world of direful kind, The Bard illustrious leads my mind, 'Midst heaths and wilds to stray; Where the fierce whirlwinds sweep the plain; Where the moon feebly holds her reign; And ghosts elude the day.
To hear from off the mountains steep, The plaintive sounds, from caverns deep, Of water's dismal roar: To hear the maiden's doleful cries, That on her warrior's tomb-stone dies, Who her did much adore.
I meet this bard of silver hair, He wanders in the valley drear, Whilst grief his mind consumes: His father's footsteps tries to trace In vain, for time does them efface; He only finds their tombs.
The pale moon sinks, amid the waves, He contemplates her as she laves Her tresses in the sea: Reflects on time for ever gone, When danger pleased and spurred him on, Till every foe did flee.
When he returned on evening grey, The moon shone on his Bark of prey, His trophies won, displayed: When by his countenance, I find Deep-rooted sorrow fill his mind, That youth so soon decayed.
When I perceive that glory bright To fade so soon, to sink in night, And tottering to the grave: And when around he casts an eye On the cold earth, where he must die, The fate of e'en the brave.--
The traveller will come, he cries, He'll come who saw my beauty rise, And anxiously enquire; Where is the bard and warrior gone, Where is Fingal's illustrious son, Whither does he retire.
Then searching o'er the field and mead, He lightly on my tomb shall tread, But me he ne'er shall find: Then I, my friend, like a true knight, My sword shall draw, my prince to right, And ease his troubled mind.
And this atchieved, with grief opprest, Could plunge it deep in my own breast, And eager for him bleed: To follow him now half divine, Hero of the Fingalian line, Who by my hand was freed.
_Universal Asylum and Columbian Mag._, VI-50, Jan. 1791, Phila.
[Goethe, _Die Leiden des jungen Werthers_. Letter dated Oct. 12, 1772.]
[S. Gessner, _Amyntas_. "Bei frühem Morgen kam der arme Amyntas...." Idyllen, Erste Folge.]
_New Idylles By Gessner._ Trans. by W. Hooper, M.D., 1776, London. P. 25, _Thyrsis_.]
AMYNTAS. A Pastoral Fragment from Gessner.
_N. Y. Mag. or Lit. Repos._, IV-584, Oct 1793, N. Y.
[Also in _Mass. Mag._, IV-351, June 1792, Boston.]