Ossian Collection > Poems of Ossian

TEAIORA. 473
away the storm of rain, and leaves the white streams
to the sun, and high hills with their heads of grass ; so
the returning war brightened the mind of Fingal. He
bounded, on his spear, over Lubar, and struck his echo-
ing shield. His ridgy host bend forward, at once,
with all their pointed steel.
Nor Erin heard, with fear, the sound : wide they
come rolling along. Dark Malthos, in the wing of
war, looks forward from shaggy brows. Next rose
that beam of light, Hidalla ! then the sidelong-looking
gloom of Maronnan. Blue-shielded Clonar lifts the
spear : Cormar shakes his bushy locks on the wind.
Slowly, from behind a rock, rose the bright form of
Atha. First appeared his two-pointed spears, then the
half of his burnished shield : like the rising of a nightly
meteor, over the valley of ghosts. But when he shone
all abroad, the hosts plunged, at once, into strife. Tho
gleaming waves of steel are poured on either side.
As meet two troubled seas, with the rolling of all
their waves, when they feel the wings of contending
winds, in the rock-sided frith of Lumon ; along the
echoing hills in the dim course of ghosts : from the
blast fall the torn groves on the deep, amidst the foamy
jiath of whales. So mixed the hosts ! Now Fingal ;
now Cathmor came abroad. The dark tumbling of death
is before them : the gleam of broken steel is rolled on
their steps, as, loud, the high-bounding kings hewed
down the ridge of shields.
Maronnan fell, by Fingal, laid large across a stream.
The waters gathered by his side, and leapt gray over
his bossy shield. Clonar is pierced by Cathmor ; nor
j-et lay the chief on earth. An oak seized his hair in
his fall. His helmet rolled on the ground. By its
thong, hung his broad shield ; over it wandered his
streaming blood. Tla-min shall weep, in the hall, and
strike her heaving breast.
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