The poems of Ossian, in the orig. Gaelic, with a literal tr. into Engl. and a dissertation on the authenticity of the poems by A. Clerk. With the tr. by Macpherson, Volume 1

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1870
 

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Page 205 - I have seen the walls of Balclutha, but they were desolate. The fire had resounded in the halls : and the voice of the people is heard no more. The stream of Clutha was removed from its place, by the fall of the walls. The thistle shook, there, its lonely head : the moss whistled to the wind. The fox looked out from the windows, the rank grass of the wall waved round its head. Desolate is the dwelling of Moina, silence is in the house of her fathers.
Page 225 - Whence are thy beams, O Sun! thy everlasting light! Thou comest forth in thy awful beauty; the stars hide themselves in the sky ; the moon, cold and pale, sinks in the western wave; but thou thyself movest alone. Who can be a companion of thy course? The oaks of the mountains fall; the mountains themselves decay with years, the ocean shrinks and grows again; the moon herself is lost in heaven, but thou art forever the same, rejoicing in the brightness of thy course.
Page 225 - O thou that rollest above, round as the shield of my fathers! Whence are thy beams, O sun! thy everlasting light? Thou comest forth, in thy awful beauty; the stars hide themselves in the sky; the moon, cold and pale, sinks in the western wave. But thou thyself movest alone; who can be a companion of thy course!
Page 353 - I beheld their chief," says Moran, " tall as a glittering rock. His spear is a blasted pine. His shield the rising moon ! He sat on the shore ! like a cloud of mist on the silent h,ll ! Many, chief of heroes ! I said, many are our hands of war. Well art thou named, the Mighty Man : but many mighty men are seen from Tura's windy walls.
Page 147 - The flame was dim and distant ; the moon hid her red face in the east. A blast came from the mountain, on its wings was the spirit of Loda.
Page xv - Less than archangel ruined, and the excess Of glory obscured ; as when the sun, new risen, Looks through the horizontal misty air Shorn of his beams, or from behind the moon, In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds On half the nations, and with fear of change Perplexes monarchs.
Page 370 - The stream murmurs along. The old tree groans in the wind. The lake is troubled before thee : dark are the clouds of the sky ! But thou art snow on the heath ; thy hair is the mist of Cromla, when it curls on the hill, when it shines to the beam of the west! Thy breasts are two smooth rocks seen from Branno of streams. Thy arms, like two white pillars in the halls of the great Fingal.
Page 176 - He falls like an oak on the plain ; like a rock from the shaggy hill. What shall she do, hapless maid ! He bleeds ; her Connal dies ! All the night long she cries, and all the day, " O Connal, my love, and my friend!
Page 360 - Cromla echoes round. On Lena's dusky heath they stand , like mist that shades the hills of autumn: when broken and dark it settles high, and lifts its head to heaven. "Hail," said Cuthullin, "Sons of the narrow vales! hail, hunters of the deer! Another sport is drawing near: it is like the dark rolling of that wave on the coast!
Page 145 - His darkened brow bends forward to the coast: he looks back to the lagging winds. His hair is disordered on his back. The silence of the king is terrible. Night came down on the sea: Rotha's bay received the ship. A rock bends along the coast with all its echoing wood. On the top is the circle of Loda, and the mossy stone of power.

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