Ossian Collection > Dean of Lismore's book

THE DEAN OF LISMORR
The author of this is Ossian : ^
Long are the clouds tliis niglit abiive me :
The last was a long niglit to me.
This day, although I find it long,
Yesterday was longer still.
Each day that conies is long to me,
Such indeed was not my wont.
Now is no fight, or battle-field.
No learning noble feats of arms
Without maiden, song, or harp ;
No crushing bones or warlike deeds,
No studious learning any more,
No hospitable heart or board.
No soft wooing, and no chase.
In both of which I took delight.
Without the battle-march or fight,
Alas ! how sorrowful life's close ;
No hunting of the hind or stag.
How different from my heart's desire !
No trappings for our hounds, no hounds.
Long are the clouds this night above me.
No rising up to noble feats,
No mirthful sport as we would wish,
No swimming heroes in our lakes.
1 This piece is extracted and printed genuine compositions of Ossian, there
in the report on the Poems of Ossian, is sufficient e\ddence that the references
published by the Highhind Society. Dr. to the Saint are of more recent introduc-
Smith, however, who made the extract, tion, in the fact, that if Ossian saw Art,
appears not to have read it with much wlio lived in the opening of the third
care or accuracy, and the concluding century, as he tells us in the preceding
portion, from the twentieth line down- fragment, he could hardly hold a dia-
■wards, is suppressed altogether. This logue with St. Patrick, who flourished
to have arisen from a desire to in the fifth. In the present publication
suppress all the references in those the poems of every kind are given just
poems to St. Patrick, and thus to estab- as they stand, without any reference to
Itsh by all possible means their Scot- the effect on existing systems and theo-
tish origin. If any of the Poems are the ries, Scotch or Irish.