Ossian Collection > Poems of Ossian

TEMORA. 455
& .nought came rushing along my soul. My eyes roll
in fire : my stride was in the clang of steel. " I will
find thee, king of Erin ! in the gathering of thy thou-
sands find thee. Why should that cloud escape, that
quenched our early beam ? Kindle your meteors on
your hills, my fathers. Light my daring steps. I will
consume in wrath.* But should not I return ?
The king is without a son, gray-haired among his foes !
His arm is not as in the days of old. His fame grows
dim in Erin. Let me not behold him, laid low in his
latter field. — But can I return to the king ? Will he
not ask about his son ? " Thou oughtest to defend
young Fillan." — Ossian will meet the foe ! Green
Erin, thy sounding tread is pleasant to my ear. I rush
on thy ridgy host, to shun the eyes of Fingal. I hear
the voice of the king, on Mora's misty top ! He calls
his two sons ! I come, my father, in my grief. I
come like an eagle, which the flame of night met in
the desert, and spoiled of half his wings !
Distant, round the king, on Mora, the broken ridges
of Morven are rolled. They turned their eyes : each
darkly bends, on his own ashen spear. Silent stood
the king in the midst. Thought on thought rolled over
his soul: as waves on a secret mountain lake, each
with its back of foam. He looked ; no son appeared, .
with his long-beaming spear. Tbe sighs rose, crowd-
ing, from his soul ; but ho concealed his grief. At
length I stood beneath an oak. No voice of mine was
* Here the sentence is designedly left unfinished. The sense is,
that he was resolved, like a destroying fire, to consume Gathmor,
\vL " had killed his brother. In the midst of this resolution, the
situation of Fingal suggests itself to him in a very strong hght. He
resolves to return to assist the king in prosecuting the war. But
then his shame for not defending his brother recurs to him. He is
determined again to go and find out Cathmor. We may consider
him as in the act of advancing towards the eneray, when the horn
of Fingal sounded on Mora, and called back his people to his
presence.