Ossian Collection > Poems of Ossian

296 OSSIAN
and sad ! I behold the foe round the aged. I behold
the wasting away of his fame. Thou art left alone in
the field, O grey-haired king of Selma ! "
I laid him in the hollow rock, at the roar of the
nightly stream. One red star looked in on the hero.
Winds lift, at times, his locks. I listen. No sound is
heard. The warrior slept ! As lightning on a cloud, a
thought came rushing along my soul. My eyes roll in
fire : my stride was in the clang of steel. " I will find
thee, king of Erin ! in the gathering of thy thousands
find thee. Why should that cloud escape that quenched
our early beam ? Kindle your meteors on your hills, my
fathers. Light my daring steps. I will consume in
wrath.* But should not I return I The king is without
a son, grey-haired among his foes ! His arm is not as
in the days of old. His fame grows dim in Erin. Let
me not behold him, laid low in his latter field. But can
I return to the king? Will he not ask about his son?
"Thou oughtest to defend young Fillan." Ossian will
meet the foe ? Green Erin, thy sounding tread is pleasant
to my ear, I rush on thy ridgy host, to shun the eyes of
* Here the sentence is designedly left unfinished. The sense
is that he was resolved, like a destroying fire, to consume Cath-
mor, who had killed his brother. In the midst of this resolution,
the situation of Fingal suggests itself to him in a very strong
light. He resolves to return to assist the king in prosecuting
the war. But then his shame for not defending his brother
recurs to him. He is determined again to go and find out
Cathmor. We may consider him as in the act of advancing
towards the enemy when the horn of Fingal sounded on Mora
and called back his people to his presence. This soliloquy is
natural; the resolutions which so suddenly follow one another
are expressive of a mind extremely agitated with sorrow and
conscious shame ; yet the behaviour of Ossian, in his execution
of the commands of Fingal, is so irreprehensible that it is not
easy to determine where he failed in his duty. The truth is
that when men fail in designs which they ardently wish to
accomplish, they naturally blame themselves as the chief cause
of their disappointment.