Ossian Collection > Poems of Ossian

TEMORA 321
war. He strewed the field with dead. Young Hidalla
came. "Soft voice of streamy Clonar! Why dost thou
Uft the steel ? O that we met in the strife of song, in thy
own rushy vale ! " Malthos beheld him low, and dark-
ened as he rushed along. On either side of a stream,
we bend in the echoing strife. Heaven comes rolling
down : around burst the voices of squally winds. Hills
are clothed, at times, in fire. Thunder rolls in wreaths
of mist. In darkness shrunk the foe : Morven's warriors
stood aghast. Still I bent over the stream, amidst my
whistling locks. Then rose the voice of Fingal, and
the sound of the flying foe. I saw the king, at times,
in lightning, darkly-striding in his might. I struck
my echoing shield, and hung forward on the steps of
Alnecma: the foe is rolled before me, like a wreath of
smoke.
The sun looked forth from his cloud. The hundred
streams of Moi-lena shone.* Slow rose the blue columns
of mist, against the glittering hill. "Where are the
mighty kings?! Nor by that stream, nor wood are
they! I hear the clang of arms! Their strife is in
the bosom of that mist. Such is the contending of
* Though a poetical number, if all were reckoned in and about
Lena, I think this amount would not be far from the truth. C.
t Fingal and Cathmor. The conduct here is perhaps proper.
The numerous descriptions of single combats have already
exhausted the subject. Nothing new nor adequate to our high
idea of the kings can be said. A coliinin of mist is thrown over
the whole, and the combat is left to the imagination of the
reader. Poets have almost universally failed in their descriptions
of this sort. Not all the strength of Homer could sustain with
dignity the minutm of a single combat. The throwing of a
spear and the braying of a shield, as some of our own poets most
elegantly express it, convey no magnificent, though they are
striking, ideas. Our imagination stretches beyond, and conse-
quently despises the description. It were, therefore, well for
some poets, in my opinion (though it is perhaps somewhat
singular), to have sometimes thrown mist over their single
combats.