Ossian Collection > Poems of Ossian > Volume 2

391
I will check his course on the hill.
Morni's son, behold on the plain a stone — ■
A stone which has raised its hoary head
Through the grass which shrills in the wind :
270 A hero of my kin is in the grave ;
There do thou lay me down in night."
Slowly he moved on the hill ;
He saw the turmoil of the field,
The strong flashing of the fight uprising,
275 Sparkling and whirling around him.
Like a flame at night in the glen.
Rising afar amid the heather.
Now stifling its head in smoke,
Now raising its red mad stream
280 As rise or fail the winds —
Even thus the conflict met
The eyes of Dermid of broad shield.
Before his host were the great strides of Folda,
Like a dark ship on the ridge of billows
285 When she sails between two lands,
Going forward and backward on the sea
Amid the tempest of a cold and stormy moon.
DUAN V.
and points to
a stone by
which he
wishes to he
buried.
He goes for-
ward and sees
the battle,
which is com-
pared to a Kre
at night, now
hid in smoke,
now shooting
npwards its
flames.
He sees Folda
rushing hither
and tliither,
lilce a ship
tacking
against a
storm in a
narrow sea.
Dermid, wrathful, beheld his course ;
He rallied his utmost streugth ;
their red streams on the hill, as hlow or cease the wiuJs, so met
the intermitting war the eye of broad-shielded Dermid. Through
the host are the strides of Foldath, like some dark ship on wintry
waves, wlien she issues from between two isles to sport on resound-
ing ocean.
Dermid with rage beholds his course. He strives to rush along ;
He sounded
a horn to
challenge