XXIII.

Now lay me close by yonder fall
That leaps in thunder o'er the rock;
My lyre and shell attend my call,

The spear my sires in battle shook.
XXXIV.

And come whence ocean's waters roll,
Ye breezes mild that softly blow,
And bear away my parting soul
Where sinks the sun at evening low.
XXXV.

O bear me to the happy isles

Where shades of mighty heroes rest, Who, sunk in sleep, forget their toils, Or wake the music of the blest.

XXXVI.

Blind OSSIAN'S misty halls unfold :
Your eyes no more the bard shall view :

Let me my harp and shell behold,—

And now, dear harp and shell, adieu!

NOTES

ON

THE AGED BARD'S WISH.

No. 1. P. 395.

THE first verse is so compressed in the original, that it is not possible to confine the sense in an equal number of English lines. The second has also some peculiar epithets

that cannot be transfused into English in the same bounds. Thus it becomes necessary to give the sense of these two, in three English verses. This explanation is meant for the direction of such readers as may have the curiosity to compare this close and often literal translation with the corresponding verses of the original poem.

Betwixt the twelfth and fourteenth verses of the original are two highly figurative and poetical, but so much wrapt in the mist of local superstition, that they are difficult to understand or translate, and could only excite interest in minds to which the wild solemnity they breathe is in some degree familiar.

No. 2.

I see Benard, of lofty brow.-P. 398.

The fourteenth verse has great force in the original.Literally it runs thus:

"I see Benard, chieftain of a thousand mountains ;
"Among his locks are the visions of the roes,—
"On his head is the sleep of the clouds."

No. 3.

The water-nymph, with bosom white.-P. 392.

Here the imagery grows so bold, and the expressions so peculiar to the original language, that it becomes necessary to render the sense, rather than the literal meaning, which again dilates two verses into three. The epithet translated water nymph, is still bolder in the original ; for there the swan is called

Lovely white bosom'd maid.

No. 4., at the bottom of p. 398, is inserted by mistake

No. 5. P. 399.

For the reason above-mentioned, I have marked the eighteenth verse so as to answer the corresponding verse of the original.

I am thus attentive to minute particulars, because a faithful, though not constrained, or literal translation from nature's own genuine language, as it may justly be called, affords a double pleasure.-The imagination is amused,

and the heart affected, by the picturesque and pathetic powers of original poetry; and the understanding and judgment are exercised in tracing the operations of the untutored mind, and the powers of unassisted genius.

No. 6.

Tell from what distant land the wind.—P. 399.

As there is very little frost or snow in the islands, great numbers of swans come there from Norway in the beginning of winter some stay to hatch, but they mostly go northward in summer. This furnishes the bard with the fine image, very strongly expressed in the original, of the north wind bearing towards him the moan of the departed; upon which he enquires of the swan from what cold country that well known voice came.-This affords him a pretence for digressing.

Bb 3