Ossian Collection > Poems of Ossian

10 OSSIAN
on her face. She saw the cleft helmet of S waran. * She
shrunk, darkened, from Fingal. . . • "Art thou fallen,
by thy hundred streams, O love of the mournful maid ? "
U-thorno, that risest in waters ! on whose side are
the meteors of night ! I behold the dark moon descending,
behind thy resounding woods. On thy top dwells the
misty Loda : the house of the spirits of men ! In the end
of his cloudy hall, bends forward Cruth-loda of swords.
His form is dimly seen, amid his wavy mist. His right
hand is on his shield. In his left is the half-viewless
shell. The roof of his dreadful hall is marked with
nightly fires.
The race of Cruth-loda advance, a ridge of formless
shades. He reaches the sounding shell, to those who
shone in war. But, between him and the feeble, his
shield rises, a darkened orb. He is a setting meteor to
the weak in arms. Bright^ as a rainbow on streams,
came Lulan's white-bosomed maid.
* Corban-carglas, from seeing the helmet of Swaran bloody
in the hands of Fingal, conjectured that that hero was killed.
A part of the original is lost. It appears, however, from the
sequel of the poem, that the daughter of Torcul-torno did not
long survive her surprise, occasioned by the supposed death of
her lover. The description of the airy hall of Loda, which is
supposed to be the same with that of Odin, the deity of
Scandinavia, is more picturesque and descriptive, than any in
the Edda, or other works of the northern Scalders.