Ossian Collection > Report of the Committee of the Highland Society of Scotland, appointed to inquire into the nature and authenticity of the poems of Ossian

POEMS OF OSSIAN. 125
They proceeded to fight with the guaine dart,
With unabated eagernefs and hardihood.
Till the graceful youth received a wound
From the nurfeling of hard fought battles.
He fell, like a tree of flourifhing growth,
In the wildernefs of pines, unexpeftcdly.
The rock from which it fprung refounds to its fall :
Its bank of earth fhakes, and burlls afunder.
*' O fon of youth, who hall come from a foreign land 1
By me has thy wound been given.
Soon fhall thy ftone be exalted.
Do not conceal from us for ever who thou art.
Tell me now, without referve,
Since fate has met tliee in my field of battle.
Who thou art, and what thy name.
And from what quarter thou haft come."
" Alas ! that thou didft fail to know me,
jMy noble, high-minded, beloved father !
When my dart, with fideway aim and feeble cafl',
.Sought thee with averted barb."
The Society mull not however judge of the force
^nd beauty of this poem by the tranflation here giv-
en of it. There is, in the original GaeHc, particu»
"larly in the defcription of the combat of the heroes,
'by means of the fucceffive fwell of epithets, the ap-
propriate terms of fimpHcity and force by which the
aftion is brought before the eye, and the rapid move-
ment of the meafure which gives it to the ear, alto-
gether an effeO: produced, to which no combination
of words in the EngHfh language, which the Com-
mittee could either command or procure, can at all
do juftice.
* Chaidls