Ossian Collection > Poems of Ossian > Volume 1

A POEM. 411
looks. Her eyes were wandering flames, amidst
disordered locks. Forward is her white arm,
with the spear ; her high heaving breast is seen,
white as foamy waves that rise, by turns, amidst
rocks. They are beautiful, but terrible, and
mariners call the winds ! "
"Come, ye dwellers of Loda!" she said,
" come, Carchar, pale in the midst of clouds !
Sluthmor that stridest in airy halls ! Corchtur,
terrible in winds ! Receive, from his daughter's
spear, the foes of Suran-dronlo. No shadow, at
his roaring streams; no mildly-looking form
was he ! When he took up his spear, the hawks
shook their sounding wings : for blood was
man of genius. Our chief sailing, in a storm, along one of
the islands jf Orkney, saw a woman in a boat near the shore,
whom he thought, as he expresses it himself, as beautiful as
a sudden ray of the sun, on the dark heaving deep. The verses
of Ossian, on the attitude of Runo-forlo, which was so similar
to that of the woman in the boat, wrought so much on his
fancy, that he fell desperately in love. The winds, however,
drove him from the coast, and, after a few days, he arrived at
his residence in Scotland. There his passion increased to such
a degree, tlint two of his friends, fearing the consequence,
sailed to the Orkneys, to carry to him the object of his desire.
Upon inquiry they soon found the nymph, and carried her to
the enamoured chief; but mark his surprize, when, instead of
a ray of the sun, he saw a skinny fisherwoman, more than
middle aged, appearing before him. Tradition here ends the
story : but it m.iy be easily supposed that the passion of the
chief soon subsided.