Ossian Collection > Galic antiquities

286 DARGO the Son of DRUIVEL:
here and there above the ftream, their nodding plumes.
Lift, faid Dargo, thou fon of the king, thy fword ; I am not
fallen yet. — I lift mine, faid Curach, as he came, rufhing through
the ftorm of the battle, and ftrewing men and branches, with his
lightning, along the ftream : I lift mine, he faid, as it defcended,
a flafh that blafts the oak, on Dargo.
The chief fell in the ftream. Its banks echoed around. His
people fhrunk back in their place. — But Cuthon f ftill rolled our
heroes in their diftant wing, as the whirlwind rolls the pillar of
duft ; as the blaft fweeps over a plain of ice the driven fnow. I
turned my fteps to meet him ; but Fergus was before me. His
foul of battle burned at the fight of Cuthon : his eye was like a
ftream of fire on a cloud of night. He bends forward with the
joy of a young eagle, when it fees its dun prey from Morutlfs top.
It fpreads its wings on the ftream of winds ; but the bounding
fon of the roe hears the milling of his courfe, and retires beneath
his trees.
Cuthon, a while, ftood terrible in his place; like a nightly
ghoft when he refts on Lena. He feizes the meteors of heaven as
they pafs ; he clothes his dark limbs in their terrors, and medi-
tates again the war of clouds above the trembling nations. So
ftood Cuthon, girding anew his arms : but he faw his people va-
ni£h ; and fidelong, he Ilowly, angrily, retired. — Twice, as he
went, he turned in the midft of his doubts, and ftood like the
ftream of die vale of Balva *, where it knows not which way to
turn its courfe. — He looks at length to the place where his father
fought. He fees his red hair wandering on the breaft of the ftream.
In
f The fon of Dargo. * Balva, « a ftill ftream."