Ossian Collection > Poems of Ossian > Volume 1

DU AN FIRST. 233
" Maid of Lilian," said Fingal, " white-
handed daughter of grief! a cloud, marked with
streaks of fire, is rolled along thy soul. Look
not to that dark-robed moon ; look not to those
meteors of heaven. My gleaming steel is around
thee, the terror of thy foes ! It is not the steel
of the feeble, nor of the dark in soul ! The
maids are not shut in our caves '' of streams.
They toss not their white arms alone. They
bend, fair within their locks, above the harps of
Selma. Their voice is not in the desert wild.
We melt along the pleasing sound !"
Fingal, again, advanced his steps, wide
through the bosom of night, to where the
trees of Loda shook amid squally winds. Three
stones, with heads of moss, are there ; a stream,
with foaming course: and dreadful, rolled around
them, is the dark-red cloud of Loda. High
from its top looked forward a ghost, half-formed
of the shadowy smoak. He poured his voice,
^ From this contrast, which Fingal draws, between his
own nation and the inhabitants of Scandinavia, we may learn,
that the former were much less barbarous than the latter.
This distinct'on is so much observed throughout the poems of
Ossian, that there can be no doubt, that he followed the real
manners of both nations in his own time. At the close of
the speech of Fingal, there is a great part of the original lost.