Blair Collection > Selections from the Gaelic bards

OSSIA.NIC PUETRY, 187
So awful the clash of his mail and his weapons,
While his face wore the winter of fight !
His smooth claymore glitter' d aloft — ■
In his champion hand it was light ;
And the snoring winds kept moving his locks,
Like spray in the whirlpool's might !
The hills on each side they were shaken,
And the path seem'd to tremble with fright !
Gleamed his eyes, and his great heart kept swelling —
Oh ! cheerless the terrible sight !
The " Old Lays," collected by Dr. Smith, are not inferior in
any respect to Macpherson's "Ossian." They breathe the same
spirit, exhibit the same fineness of sensibility, and are coloured by
a mountain-bred imagination. They speak of the same supersti-
tious, and they look with that life-giving energy of deep and lonely
nurtured feeling, so characteristic of the Ossianic poems. The
following is contained in the opening of a poem called, " Finan and
Lorma," where the young people around him, looking upon the
heavens, address the aged Ossian in the following natural and
beautiful verses: —
White on the plains shines the moon, bard!
And the shadow Cona holds;
Like a ghost breathes the wind from the mountain,
With a spirit voice in its folds.
There are two cloudy forms before us,
Where its host the dim night shows ;
The sigh of the moor curls their tresses,
As they tread over Alva of roes.
Dusky his dogs come with one,
And he bends his dark bow of yew ;