Ossian Collection > Poems of Ossian

TEMORA 277
now his form is gone. Unmarked is your path in the
air, ye children of the night. Often, like a reflected
beam, are ye seen in the desert wild : but ye retire
in your blasts, before our steps approach. Go then, ye
feeble race I Knowledge with you there is none ! Your
joys are weak, and like the dreams of our rest, or
the light-winged thought that flies across the soul.
Shall Cathmor soon be low? Darkly laid in his narrow
house? Where no morning comes, with her half-opened
eyes ? Away, thou shade ! to fight is mine ! All
further thought away I I rush forth, on eagle's wings,
to seize my beam of fame. In the lonely vale of
streams, abides the narrow* soul. Years roll on,
seasons return, but he is still unknown. In a blast
comes cloudy death, and lays his grey head low. His
ghost is folded in the vapour of the fenny field. Its
course is never on hills, nor mossy vales of wind. So
* An indolent and unwarlike life was held in extreme con-
tempt. Whatever a philosopher may say in praise of quiet and
retirement, I am far from thinking but they weaken and de-
base the human mind. When the faculties of the soul are
not exerted, they lose their vigour, and low and circumscribed
notions take the place of noble and enlarged ideas. Action, on
the contrary, and the vicissitudes of fortune which attend it, call
forth by turns all the powers of the mind, and, by exercising,
strengthen them. Hence it is that in great and opulent states,
when property and indolence are secured to individuals, we
seldom meet with that strength of mind which is so common
in a nation not far advanced in civilisation. It is a curious,
but just observation, that great kingdoms seldom produce great
characters, which must be altogether attributed to that indolence
and dissipation which are the inseparable companions of too
much property and security. Rome, it is certain, had more real
great men within it when its power was confined within the
narrow bounds of Latium, than when its dominion extended
over all the known world; and one petty state of the Saxon
heptarchy had perhaps as much genuine spirit in it as the
two British kingdoms united. As a state, we are much more
powerful than our ancestors, but we should lose by com-
paring individuals with them. M.