Ossian Collection > Life and letters of James Macpherson

48 yAMES MACPHERSON.
Tear on their sable way with awful sound,
And bring the groaning forest to the ground :
The trunks of elms, the shrub, the fir, the oak
In one confusion sink beneath the shock :
So death's sad spoils the bloody field be-
strow'd ;
The haughty chieftain, the ignoble croAvd,
The coward, brave, partake the common
wound,
Are friends in death, and mingle on the ground.
Dark night approach'd : the flaming lord
of day
Had plunged his glowing circle in the sea ;
On the blue sky the gath'ring clouds arise,
And tempests clap their wings along the skies ;
The murm'ring voice of heaven, at distance,
fails,
And eddying whirlwinds howl along the vales."
About this time Macpherson began to send
poetical pieces to the Scots Magazine. This was
then the only literary periodical published north
of the Tweed, and in the twenty years of its
existence, it had obtained no small popularity.
His earliest contribution was a short poem. On
the Death of Marshal Keith. James Keith, who,
with his more celebrated brother George, com-
monly known as the Earl Marischal, was a
Jacobite refugee, had served in various foreign
armies, and at his death on the 14th of October,
1758, was a field-marshal of Prussia. His