Ossian Collection > Gaelic bards

96 MODERN GAELIC BARDS.
Now shrink within its burning breast,
And boiling, thread the mountain side.
How the world quakes ! Lo ! the great stones
And rocks that fall f fom off the hill ;
Oh ! hear those hea^-y, deadly groans
That through its bursting bosom thrill.
There the blue curtain from the sun,
That, cloak-like, round the globe ^yas spread,
In fierce fire shrivels up, undone.
Like a thin leaf on embers red.
And dense clouds choke the air throughout,
With dark smoke-heaps about it wound,
For which the flames, far-flashing, spout
In curls that wreath and twirl around.
And over all the earth there rise
Dread and loud-sounding thunder peals.
Whose lightning, with the glorious skies,
Like sparks with the dry heather deals.
But more — to swell the tumult yet —
From all their arts the strong winds stray,
Like angels for destruction met.
And haste this wasting work each way !
"The Day of Judgment," consisting of one hundred
and twenty-seven verses, in the measure given above, is
the longest of Buchanan's poems. From what an early
period that theme occupied his mind Avill appear from the
following extract from his " Memoirs : " — " Then the
Lord began to visit me with terrible visions — dreams in
the night — which greatly frightened me. I always
dreamed that the day of judgment was come, that Christ
appeared in the clouds to judge the world ; that all the