Ossian Collection > Poems of Ossian > Volume 3

Book VIII, AN EPIC POEW, 21
Evening came down on Moi-lena. Grey
Tolled the flreams of the land. Loud came
forth the voice of Fingal : the beam of
oaks arofe. The people gathered round
with gladnefs, with gladnefs blended with
fhades. They fidelong looked to the king,
and beheld his unfinilhed joy. Pleafant,
from the way of the defert, the voice of
mufic came. It feemed, at firft, the noife
of a ftream, far diftant on its rocks. Slow
it rolled along the hill, like the ruffled wing
of a breeze, when it takes the tufted beard
of the rocks, in the ftill feafon of night. It
was the voice of Condan, mixed with Car-
ril's trembling harp They came with blue-
eyed Ferad-artho, to Mora of the ftreams.
Sudden burlts the fong from our bards,
on Ler.a : the hoft ilruck their fhiilds midlt
the found. Giadneis rofe brightenmg oa
the king, like the gleam of a cloudy day,
■when it ri^es. on the green hill, before the
roar of winds. He iirack the boffy (hield
of kings y at one-; they ceafe around. The
He has not feen Sul-malla, the fall of a beam of his
own ; no fair-haired fon, in his blood, young troub-
ler of the field. I am lonel)-, young branch of Lu-
nion, I may hear the voice of the feeble, when my
ftrength Ihall have failed in years, for young Ojtar
has ceafed on his field." — * * « *
Sul-malla returned to her own country. She
makes a.confiderable figure in another poem ; her
behaviour in that piece accounts for that partial re-
gard with which the poet ought to ipeak of her
throughout Temora.