Ossian Collection > Ossian, his principal poems

C|t i'xh larbs;
The night is dull and dark ; in clouds
Ileav'n the high-top'd hill enshrouds ;
From the black sky no moon doth look ;
The blast I hear, the A^^ood that shook ;
Dull and distant now it seems,
And murmur low the valley streams ;
From the yew tree's solemn shade,
The lonely screech-owl wakes the dead.
Behold yon misty form arise !
'Tis a ghost ! — it fades, it flies !
* This poem has been pi-eserved by Maepherson, who has ap-
pended a prose translation of it as a note to one of Ossian's poems.
Though closely resembling Ossiau's composition, it evidently be-
longs to a much later period. Like the "Songs of Selma," the
competitions of the bards has afforded a subject to its author- Five
of them having met at the residence of a chief, who was a poet him-
self, went severally to make their observations on, and returned
with an extempore description of, the night. The time is October,
which, in the north of Scotland, has all that variety which tin
bards ascribe to it in their descriptions. The poet Gray says, con