Ossian Collection > Ossian, his principal poems

APPENDIX TO THE BARDS. Ixxix
These are Taliesin's rhymes,
These shall live to distant times,
And the hard's prophetic rage
Animate a future age.
Child of sorrow, child of pain,
Never may I smile again,
If, till all-subduing death
Close these eyes, and stop this breath,
Ever I forget to raise
My grateful songs to Urien's praise !
Ko. 4, Hervarar Saga, A Gothic Ode. — There is a wild-
ness and gloomy grandeur in the religious faith of ancient
Scandinavia, which, mixed up as it is with a firm belief
in, and bold display of, the rites of magic and enchantment,
appals and harrows up the soul in a degree greatly beyond
what classical superstition can efiect. When we consider
that chivalry sprang up, and was nursed, in the bosom of
this tremendous creed ; that it gradually blended, or con-
trasted with its terrific features, what was tender, courteous,
and gallant ; and ac length united to all these the
fantastic wonders of the east, we cannot be surprised that
from such a combination should have arisen a system of
fabling better calculated perhaps than any other the world
has yet seen, to excite the imagination of the poet.
Angaxtyr, wake at Hervor's word,
Thy child and Suafu's ; honour' d shade !
Give from the tomb the temper' d sword,
By elves for Suafurlami made.*
* Suafurlami, a Scandinavian monarch, returning from hunting,
bewildered himself among the mountains. About sunset, he beheld
a large rock, and two dwarfs sitting before the mouth of a cavern.
The king drew his sword, and intercepted their i-etreat, by springing