We are those blue-eyed, yellow-haired
Saxons, those slender, dark-haired Normans.
The profession of the bard attracted more respect in those days
from the importance attached to fame. It was his province to
record the deeds of heroes. When Ossian hears the traditions of
inferior bards, he exclaims, -
"I straightway seize the unfutile tales,
And send them down in faithful verse."
His philosophy of life is expressed in the opening of the third
Duan of Ca-Lodin.
"Whence have sprung the things that are?
And whither roll the passing years?
Where does Time conceal its two heads,
In dense impenetrable gloom,
Its surface marked with heroes' deeds alone?
I view the generations gone;
The past appears but dim;
As objects by the moon's faint beams,
Reflected from a distant lake.
I see, indeed, the thunderbolts of war,
But there the unmighty joyless dwell,
All those who send not down their deeds
To far, succeeding times."
The ignoble warriors die and are forgotten;
"Strangers come to build a tower,
And throw their ashes overhand;
Some rusted swords appear in dust;
One, bending forward, says,
`The arms belonged to heroes gone;
We never heard their praise in song.'"
The grandeur of the similes is another feature which characterizes
great poetry. Ossian seems to speak a gigantic and universal
language. The images and pictures occupy even much space in the
landscape, as if they could be seen only from the sides of
mountains, and plains with a wide horizon, or across arms of the
sea.
