Osseous

“ Every fiber of his being is less susceptible to outside stimuli than that of other types. In this he is the exact opposite of the Thoracic whose nerves, as we have pointed out, are so finely organized that he is hypersensitive.
Resists Change
¶ Osseous people do not change anything, from their hair dress to their minds, any oftener than necessary. When they do, it is for what they consider overpoweringly good reasons. ”

“ For what to them was only music, was to Osseo a voice that he understood, a voice from the sky itself, the voice of the Evening Star. These were the words that he heard:
"Suffer no more, my son; for the evil spell is broken, and hereafter no magician shall work you harm. Suffer no more; for the time has come when you shall leave the earth and dwell here with me in the heavens. Before you is a dish on which my light has fallen, blessing it and giving it a magic virtue. Eat of this dish, Osseo, and all will be well." ”

“ After many moons had come and gone there came to Osseo and his wife a little son. As the boy grew he seemed brighter than the starlight, and Osseo and Oweenee loved him dearly; but his grandfather, the Evening Star, loved him best of all.
One day Evening Star said to Osseo, “You must be careful not to let the light beams from the small Star that dwells near by fall upon the cage of singing birds, or upon yourself, or your wife, or your son. The Star is an evil spirit, and the light beams are his enchanted arrows. They change the form of all those upon whom they fall.” ”

“ The food was very delicious, and they were all happy but Osseo, who looked at his wife and then gazed upward, as if he was looking into the substance of the sky. Sounds were soon heard, as if from far-off voices in the air, and they became plainer and plainer, till he could clearly distinguish some of the words.
"My son—my son," said the voice, "I have seen your afflictions and pity your wants. I come to call you away from a scene that is stained with blood and tears. The earth is full of sorrows. ”

“ They shall shine like fire, and glisten like the most beautiful scarlet. Every female shall also change her state and looks, and no longer be doomed to laborious tasks. She shall put on the beauty of the starlight, and become a shining bird of the air, clothed with shining feathers. She shall dance and not work—she shall sing and not cry."
"My beams," continued the voice, "shine faintly on your lodge, but they have a power to transform it into the lightness of the skies, and decorate it with the colors of the clouds. Come, Osseo, my son, and dwell no longer on earth. ”

“ Osseo obeyed, and then took his seat in the lodge.
"Pity was shown to you," resumed the King of the Star, "on account of the contempt of your wife's sisters, who laughed at her ill fortune and ridiculed you while you were under the power of that wicked spirit whom you overcame at the rock. That spirit lives in the next lodge, the small star you see on the left of mine. He has always felt envious of my family because we had greater power, and especially that we had committed to us the care of the female world. ”

“ Thus pagan died old Penda as he lived:
Yet Penda's sons were Christian, kindlier none;
His daughters nuns; and lamb-like Mercia's House,
Lion one while, made end. King Oswy raised
His monasteries twelve: benigner life
Around them spread: wild waste, and robber bands
Vanished: the poor were housed, the hungry fed:
And Oswy sent his little new-born babe
Dewed with her mother's tear-drops, Eanfleda,
Like some young lamb with fillet decked and flower,
Yet dedicated not to death, but life,
To Hilda sent on Whitby's sea-washed hill,
Who made her Bride of Christ. ”

“ But to Ossian thou lookest in vain, for he beholds thy beams no more; whether thy yellow hair flows on the eastern clouds, or thou tremblest at the gates of the west. But thou art perhaps, like me, for a season; thy years will have an end. Thou shalt sleep in thy clouds careless of the voice of the morning. Exult then, O sun, in the strength of thy youth! Age is dark and unlovely; it is like the glimmering light of the moon when it shines through broken clouds, and the mist is on the hills: the blast of the north is on the plain; the traveller shrinks in the midst of his journey. ”

“ The poet seeks not to vary their character, and his hearers are willing to be charmed over and over again by the same strains. We believe that the poetry of Ossian would be destroyed by any greater distinctness or variety of imagery. And if, indeed, Fingal lived and Ossian sung, we must believe that the old bard was blind; and we suspect that in such an age, such a man would, in his blindness, think dreamily indeed of the torrents, and lakes, and heaths, and clouds, and mountains, moons and stars, which he had leapt, swam, walked, climbed, and gazed on in the days of his rejoicing youth. ”

“ You shall hear a tale of wonder, Hear the story of Osseo, Son of the Evening Star, Osseo! "Once, in days no more remembered, Ages nearer the beginning, When the heavens were closer to us, And the Gods were more familiar, In the North-land lived a hunter, With ten young and comely daughters, Tall and lithe as wands of willow; Only Oweenee, the youngest, She the wilful and the wayward, She the silent, dreamy maiden, Was the fairest of the sisters. "All these women married warriors, Married brave and haughty husbands ”

“ And than Ossian himself, the last of his race, answering the plaints of the wilderness, the plover's shriek, the hiss of the homeless stream, the bee in the heather bloom, the rustle of the birch above his head, the roar of the cataract behind, in a voice of kindred freedom and kindred melancholy, conversing less with the little men around him than with the giant spirits of his fathers, we have few finer figures in the whole compass of poetry. ”

“ I have been enjoying since you left me, the most exquisite entertainment, in the perusal of the noble works of Ossian, the greatest poet, in my opinion, that ever composed, and who exceeds Homer, Virgil, and Milton. He transports us by the grandeur of his sublime, or by some sudden start of tenderness he melts us into distress: Who can read, without the warmest emotions, the pathetic complaints of the venerable old bard, when he laments his blindness, and the death of his friends? ”

“ Her leaden sceptre o'er a slumb'ring world...
Creation sleeps. 'Tis as the gen'ral pulse
Of life stood still, and Nature made a pause;
An awful pause, prophetic of her end...etc.
There is a wealth of imagery and comparison amid Ossian's melancholy and mourning; clouds and mist are the very shadows of his struggling heroes. For instance:
His spear is a blasted pine, his shield the rising moon. ”

“ Osseo heard them one day. He took courage and asked her to help him bear his sorrows. She became his wife, for she knew his heart was as kind as it was brave.
The chief of the Ojibways made a great feast. The sacred dance was to be danced by all the young braves. Oweenee’s sisters mocked at her again. This is what they said:
“See Oweenee. She is like the young vine that clings to the pine that is black with burning. Osseo is like the pine that the lightning has torn and burned. Oweenee would make him like a young pine. She is blind.
“Osseo, go from us. Leave Oweenee. She is not for you.” ”

“ There may long be those who doubt the existence of Ossian; but none will deny that in these pages are to be found passages unsurpassed in majesty and hardly equalled in tenderness. What could there be more full of pathos than Ossian's frequent address to Malvina, the betrothed of his dead son Oscar, and the companion of his own old age? And what in literature is nobler than the bard's apostrophe to the splendours of heaven, or his lament at the tombs of heroes?—"Weep, thou father of Morar! weep; but thy son heareth thee not. Deep is the sleep of the dead; low their pillow of dust. ”

“ Laughed and flouted all her lovers,
All her young and handsome suitors,
And then married old Osseo,
Old Osseo, poor and ugly,
Broken with age and weak with coughing,
Always coughing like a squirrel. ”

“ The figurative parts of Ossian are like Isaiah and the Psalms,—the same use is made of gaunt Nature. He uses but few and simple images; but they are drawn from such objects as are familiar to men in all ages. To the poet who can use them greatly in his song, and make them convey his thoughts, the elements and stars seem to be nearer and more friendly. And other men involuntarily relinquish to him somewhat of their claim on Nature. The sun and the sea and the mists are his more than ours. ”

“ When the poison light-arrow struck Osseo he became like an Indian who had seen a hundred winters.
Nothing old or evil can live on the Woman’s Star. Osseo could not return to his mother. He was brave. He made no mourning. He made many friends among the Ojibways.
Oweenee was the daughter of a chief. She was like the red lily that grows on the prairies. She had nine sisters. They were like a field of lilies. Her sisters had each married a great warrior.
Oweenee loved the old and wrinkled Osseo. There was none to cook the deer meat his trembling feet [182] brought to his wigwam. ”

“ The race of daring Trenmor are not the dark in soul. Thou shalt not wander, by streams unknown, blue-eyed Oina-morul! Within this bosom is a voice; it comes not to other ears: it bids Ossian hear the hapless, in their hour of woe. Retire, soft singer by night! Ton-thormod shall not mourn on his rock!"
With morning I loosed the king. I gave the long-haired maid. Mal-orchol heard my words, in the midst of his echoing halls. "King of Fuärfed wild, why should Ton-thormod mourn? He is of the race of heroes, and a flame in war. Your fathers have been foes, but now their dim ghosts rejoice in death. ”

“ When the world is dark with tempests, when thunder rolls and lightning flies, thou lookest in thy beauty from the clouds and laughest at the storm.
... "Rise, moon, from behind thy clouds! Stars of the night arise, lead me, some light, to the place where my love rests from the chase alone—his bow near him unstrung; his dogs panting around him. The stream and the wind roar aloud, I hear not the voice of my love."
Poems of Ossian. ”

“ In the same way the heroes of Ossian possess in the highest degree an intense inward life; but in their very gloominess and melancholy they appear as the genuine growth of their hills of heather, whose thistles are swept by the wind, of their rain-clouds, mists, mountains, and dark caves. The physiognomy of the conditions under which they live reveals to us as nothing else can the secret of that inner life of emotion which is lived through with all its sadness, mourning, its pains, its battles, and its mist-like apparitions in such a natural setting ”

“ The shepherds stalked along at the head of the procession, or, when it was stationary, stood statue-like in the fields. They were great, gaunt, sinewy men, wearing the Ossau costume, but one and all enveloped in a long, whitish cloak, with a peaked hood, flowing to the earth, which gave them a ghastly, winding-sheet sort of appearance. When a passing shower came rattling down upon the wind, the herdsmen, stalking slowly across the fields, enveloped from head to foot in these long, grey, shapeless robes, looked like so many Ossianic ghosts flitting among the mountains. ”

“ Was the spirit of Osseo,
From the Evening Star descended,
Star of Evening, Star of Woman,
Star of tenderness and passion!
55All its fire was in his bosom
All its beauty in his spirit,
All its mystery in his being, [Pg 140]
All its splendor in his language!
"And her lovers, the rejected,
60Handsome men with belts of wampum,
Handsome men with paint and feathers,
Pointed at her in derision,
Followed her with jest and laughter.
But she said: 'I care not for you,
65Care not for your belts of wampum,
Care not for your paint and feathers,
Care not for your jest and laughter ”

“ In clouds rose the eastern light. The foe came forth in arms. The strife is mixed on Rath-col, like the roar of streams. Behold the contending of kings! They meet beside the oak. In gleams of steel the dark forms are lost; such is the meeting of meteors, in a vale by night: red light is scattered round, and men foresee the storm! Duth-carmor is low in blood! The son of Ossian overcame! ”

“ Taste the food before you, for it is blessed and will change you to a spirit. Your bowls and your kettles shall be changed to silver and to wampum, and shine like scarlet shells and gleam like the firelight; and all the men and women but Oweenee shall be changed to birds.' [50]
"The voice Osseo heard was taken by the others for the voice of the whippoorwill, singing far off in the lonely forest, and they did not hear a word of what was said. But a sudden tremor ran through the lodge where they sat feasting, and they felt it rise in the air high up above the tree-tops into the starlight. ”

“ There is a joy in grief when peace dwells in the breast of the sad. But sorrow wastes the mournful, O daughter of Toscar! and their days are few! They fall away, like the flower on which the sun hath looked in his strength after the mildew has passed over it, when its head is heavy with the drops of night. Attend to the tale of Ossian, O maid! He remembers the days of his youth!
The king commanded; I raised my sails, and rushed into the bay of Croma; into Croma's sounding bay in lovely Inisfail. [1] High on the coast arose the towers of Crothar king of spears ”

“ They turn from side to side, and their tall oaks meet one another on high. Then they fall together with all their rocks and trees.'— (Fingal, B. v.) But had a bard presumed to utter such a rhapsody of bombast in the hall of shells, amid the savage warriors to whom Ossian is supposed to have sung, he would have needed all the influence of royal birth, attributed to that fabulous personage, to restrain the audience from throwing their shells at his head, and hooting him out of their company as an impudent liar. ”