Page:Poems of Ossian.djvu/79

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CATH-LODA.




Duan[1] First.

A tale of the times of old!

Why, thou wanderer unseen! Thou bender of the thistle of Lora; why, thou breeze of the valley, hast thou left mine ear? I hear no distant roar of streams! No sound of the harp, from the rock! Come, thou huntress of Lutha, Malvina, call back his soul to the bard. I look forward to Lochlin of lakes, to the dark, billowy bay of U-thorno, where Fingal descends from ocean, from the roar of winds. Few are the heroes of Morven, in a land unknown!

Starno sent a dweller of Loda, to bid Fingal to the feast; but the king remembered the past, and all his rage arose. "Nor Gormal's mossy towers, nor Starno, shall Fingal behold. Deaths wander, like shadows, over his fiery soul! Do I forget that beam of light, the white-handed daughter[2] of kings? Go, son of Loda; his words are wind to Fingal: wind, that, to and fro,

  1. Canto.
  2. Agandecca, the daughter of Starno, whom her father killed, on account of her discovering to Fingal a plot laid against his life. Her story is related at large in the third book of Fingal.