my desire,
Wing’d with impatient fire,
My rain-deer let us haste.
IV
So shall we quickly end our pleasing pain:
Behold my mistress there,
With decent motion walking o’er the plain.
Kulnasatz my rain-deer, <492>
Look yonder, where
She washes in the lake:
See while she swims,
The waters from her purer limbs
New clearness take.
SECOND ODE
I
With brightest beams let the sun shine
On Orra moor
Could I be sure
That from the top o’ th’ lofty pine
I Orra moor might see,
I to its highest bow would climb,
And with industrious labour try
Thence to descry
My mistress, if that there she be.
II
Could I but know, amid what flowers,
Or in what shade she stays,
The gaudy bowers,
With all their verdant pride,
Their blossoms and their sprays,
Which make my mistress disappear,
And her in envious darkness hide,
I from the roots and bed of earth would tear.
III
Upon the raft of clouds I’d ride,
Which unto Orra fly:
O’ th’ ravens I would borrow wings,
And all the feather’d inmates of the sky:
But wings, alas, are me deny’d,
The stork and swan their pinions will not lend, <493>
There’s none who unto Orra brings,
Or will by that kind conduct me befriend.
IV
Enough, enough! thou hast delay’d
So many summers days,
The best of days that crown the year,
Which light upon the eye-lids dart,
And melting joy upon the heart:
But since that thou so long hast stay’d,
They in unwelcome darkness disappear.
Yet vainly dost thou me forsake;
I will pursue and overtake.
V
What stronger is than bolts of steel?
What can more surely bind?
Love is stronger far than it;
Upon the head in triumph she doth sit;
Fetters the mind,
And doth control
The thought and soul.
VI
A youth’s desire is the desire of wind;
All his essays
Are long delays:
No issue can they find.
Away fond counsellors, away,
No more advice obtrude:
I’ll rather prove
The guidance of blind love;
To follow you is certainly to stray:
One single counsel, tho’ unwise, is good.
In the Scandinavian manners here described, is discovered a striking resem-<494>blance to those described by Ossian. And as such were the manners of the Scandinavians in the first stage of society, it no longer remains a wonder, that the manners of Caledonia should be equally pure in the same early period. And now every argument above urged for Ossian as a genuine historian has its full weight, without the least counterpoise. It is true, that Caledonian manners appear from Ossian to have been still more polished and refined than those of Scandinavia; but that difference may have proceeded from accidents which time has buried in oblivion.
I make no apology for insisting so largely on Scandinavian manners; for they tend remarkably to support the credit of Ossian; and consequently to ascertain a fact not a little interesting, that our forefathers were not such barbarians as they are commonly held to be. All the inhabitants of Britain were of Celtic extraction; and there is reason to believe, that the manners of Caledonia were the manners of every part of the island, before the inhabitants of the plains were inslaved by the Romans. The only circumstance peculiar to the Caledonians, is their moun-<495>tainous situation: being less exposed to the oppression of foreigners, and farther removed from commerce, they did longer than their southern neighbours preserve their manners pure and untainted.
I have all along considered the poems of Ossian in a historical view merely. In the view of criticism they have been examined by a writer of distinguished taste(a); and however bold to enter a field where he hath reaped laurels, I imagine that there still remain some trifles for me to glean. Two of these poems, Fingal and Temora, are regular epic poems; and perhaps the single instances of epic poetry moulded into the form of an opera. We have in these two poems both the Recitativo and Aria of an Italian opera; dropped indeed in the translation, from difficulty of imitation. Ossian’s poems were all of them composed with a view of music; though in the long poems mentioned, it is probable that the airs only were accompanied with the harp, the recitative being left to the voice. The poems of Ossian are singular in another respect, being probably the only regular<496> work now remaining that was composed in the hunter-state. Some songs of that early period may possibly have escaped oblivion; but no other poem of the epic kind. One may advance a step farther, and pronounce, with a high degree of probability, that Fingal and Temora are the only epic poems that ever were composed in that state. How great must have been the talents of the author, beset with every obstruction
