“dragging his spear behind,
     Cudulin sank in the distant wood,
     Like a fire upblazing ere it dies.”

Nor did Fingal want a proper audience when he spoke;

     “A thousand orators inclined
     To hear the lay of Fingal.”

The threats too would have deterred a man.  Vengeance and terror were real.  Trenmore threatens the young warrior whom he meets on a foreign strand,

     “Thy mother shall find thee pale on the shore,
     While lessening on the waves she spies
     The sails of him who slew her son.”

If Ossian’s heroes weep, it is from excess of strength, and not from weakness, a sacrifice or libation of fertile natures, like the perspiration of stone in summer’s heat.  We hardly know that tears have been shed, and it seems as if weeping were proper only for babes and heroes.  Their joy and their sorrow are made of one stuff, like rain and snow, the rainbow and the mist.  When Fillan was worsted in fight, and ashamed in the presence of Fingal,

     “He strode away forthwith,
     And bent in grief above a stream,
     His cheeks bedewed with tears. 
     From time to time the thistles gray
     He lopped with his inverted lance.”

Crodar, blind and old, receives Ossian, son of Fingal, who comes to aid him in war;—­

     “`My eyes have failed,’ says he, `Crodar is blind,
     Is thy strength like that of thy fathers? 
     Stretch, Ossian, thine arm to the hoary-haired.’ 
        I gave my arm to the king. 
     The aged hero seized my hand;
     He heaved a heavy sigh;
     Tears flowed incessant down his cheek.
     `Strong art thou, son of the mighty,
     Though not so dreadful as Morven’s prince.

     Let my feast be spread in the hall,
     Let every sweet-voiced minstrel sing;
     Great is he who is within my walls,
     Sons of wave-echoing Croma.’”

Even Ossian himself, the hero-bard, pays tribute to the superior strength of his father Fingal.

     “How beauteous, mighty man, was thy mind,
     Why succeeded Ossian without its strength?”

----------------

While we sailed fleetly before the wind, with the river gurgling under our stern, the thoughts of autumn coursed as steadily through our minds, and we observed less what was passing on the shore, than the dateless associations and impressions which the season awakened, anticipating in some measure the progress of the year.

     I hearing get, who had but ears,
       And sight, who had but eyes before,
     I moments live, who lived but years,
       And truth discern, who knew but learning’s lore.

Sitting with our faces now up stream, we studied the landscape by degrees, as one unrolls a map, rock, tree, house, hill, and meadow, assuming new and varying positions as wind and water shifted the scene, and there was variety enough for our entertainment in the metamorphoses of the simplest objects.  Viewed from this side the scenery appeared new to us.