Ossian Collection > Poems of Ossian > Volume 3

278 TEMORA :
Distant*, round the l<ing, on IMoro, the broken
ridges of Morvcn are rolled. They turned their
eyes : each darkly bends, on his own ashen spear.
Silent stood the king in the midst. Thought on
thought rolled over his soul. As waves on a secret
mountain-lake, each with its back of foam. He
looked ; no son appeared, with his long-beaming
spear. The sighs rose, crowding, from his soul ;
but he concealed his grief. At length I stood be-
neath an oak. No voice of mine was heard. What
could I say to Fingal in his hour of woe ? His
words rose, at length, in the midst : the people
shrunk backward as he spoke f.
complish, they naturally blame themselves, as the chief
cause of their disappointment.
* " This scene," says an ingenious writer, and a good
judge, " is solemn. The poet always places his chief cha-
racter amidst objects which favour the sublime. The face
of the country, the night, the broken remains of a defeated
army, and, above all, the attitude and silence of Fingal hjm-
self, are circumstances calculated to impress an awful idea
on the mind. Ossian is most successful in his night descrip-
tions. Dark images suited the melancholy temper of his
mind. His poems were all composed after the active part
of his life was over, when he was blind, and had survived
all the companions of his youth : we therefore hi.d a veil of
melancholy thrown over the whole."
t I owe the first paragraph of the following note to the
same pen :
" The abashed behaviour of the army of Fingal proceeds