| |
| IN this still place, remote from men, | |
| Sleeps Ossian, in the Narrow Glen; | |
| In this still place, where murmurs on | |
| But one meek streamlet, only one: | |
| He sang of battles, and the breath | 5 |
| Of stormy war, and violent death; | |
| And should, methinks, when all was past, | |
| Have rightfully been laid at last | |
| Where rocks were rudely heaped, and rent | |
| As by a spirit turbulent; | 10 |
| Where sights were rough and sounds were wild, | |
| And everything unreconciled; | |
| In some complaining, dim retreat, | |
| For fear and melancholy meet; | |
| But this is calm; there cannot be | 15 |
| A more entire tranquillity. | |
| |
| Does then the Bard sleep here indeed? | |
| Or is it but a groundless creed? | |
| What matters it?—I blame them not | |
| Whose fancy in this lonely spot | 20 |
| Was moved; and in such way expressed | |
| Their notion of its perfect rest. | |
| A convent, even a hermit’s cell, | |
| Would break the silence of this Dell: | |
| It is not quiet, it is not ease; | 25 |
| But something deeper far than these: | |
| The separation that is here | |
| Is of the grave; and of austere | |
| Yet happy feelings of the dead; | |
| And therefore was it rightly said | 30 |
| That Ossian, last of all his race! | |
| Lies buried in this lonely place. | |
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