Ossian Collection > Galic antiquities

A P O E M.
!G 7
Retire to thy fecret dream, where was never heard the noife of
the fp ear, the echo of the battle. There, live with deer ; grow
gray with the beard of the thidle. Sleep in the fame moffy bed
with them in death ; thy fame unfung, thy tomb unknown, thy
race unnoticed. One by one, they fall around thy tomb, un-
heeded ; as ferns die in the deep cleft of the rock, where they grow
in fecret. They grow, they decay, they die : no traveller mall
ever fay, Behold them ! — From the defart comes a wintery blaft j
on its cloudy wing fits Death, pale, grim, unlovely. Thoufands
are his quivers ; and many are his bows, always fining. Through
the fecret vale as he patTes, he beholds in bis bed the lazy man.
He draws the firing. The arrow filent flies. It flrikes ; it kills ;
but its mark is not feen in the bread, like the death that is dealt
by the deel of the valiant, in the fields of fame. Heroes raife over
the feeble no tomb : bards fing no fong : virgins touch no harp. The
little foul now hangs in the bowels of cold, dark mid ; like the fifh
locked in the ice of Lano's dream ; and now, it is tofled on fenny
clouds, the fport of rufhing winds. His courfe is often with the
vapour of death, that hovers on marfhy lakes, and fends forth its
blads, like fecret arrows, to bring death to nations. — Never are
his deps on green woody hills, on funny plains with heroes *.
" But fuch were not thy race, Ardan ; the lifters of thy brown
fhield in war. — Guard it on high, thou dweller of dorms ; frighten
the feeble when they approach it in thy hall. — But die hall fliall
* This pafiage alludes to the notion tempt in which they held fuch as led
which the Celtic tribes had of a future an idle and inactive life, appears from
ftate; the punifhment of which, in their their configning them to this region cf
opinion, confided chiefly in thick dark- horrors after death
aefs and extreme cold. The utter con- t Be-