_Nov., '81_.--Again back in Camden. As I cross the Delaware in long trips
tonight, between 9 and 11, the scene overhead is a peculiar one--swift
sheets of flitting vapor-gauze, follow'd by dense clouds throwing an
inky pall on everything. Then a spell of that transparent steel-gray
black sky I have noticed under similar circumstances, on which the moon
would beam for a few moments with calm lustre, throwing down a broad
dazzle of highway on the waters; then the mists careering again. All
silently, yet driven as if by the furies they sweep along, sometimes
quite thin, sometimes thicker--a real Ossianic night--amid the
whirl, absent or dead friends, the old, the past, somehow tenderly
suggested--while the Gael-strains chant themselves from the mists--"Be
thy soul blest, O Carril! in the midst of thy eddying winds. O that thou
wouldst come to my hall when I am alone by night! And thou dost come,
my friend. I hear often thy light hand on my harp, when it hangs on the
distant wall, and the feeble sound touches my ear. Why dost thou not
speak to me in my grief, and tell me when I shall behold my friends? But
thou passest away in thy murmuring blast; the wind whistles through the
gray hairs of Ossian."
But most of all, those changes of moon and sheets of hurrying vapor and
black clouds, with the sense of rapid action in weird silence, recall
the far-back Erse belief that such above were the preparations for
receiving the wraiths of just-slain warriors--["We sat that night in
Selma, round the strength of the shell. The wind was abroad in the oaks.
The spirit of the mountain roar'd. The blast came rustling through the
hall, and gently touch'd my harp. The sound was mournful and low, like
the song of the tomb. Fingal heard it the first. The crowded sighs of
his bosom rose. Some of my heroes are low, said the gray-hair'd king
of Morven. I hear the sound of death on the harp. Ossian, touch the
trembling string. Bid the sorrow rise, that their spirits may fly with
joy to Morven's woody hills. I touch'd the harp before the king; the
sound was mournful and low. Bend forward from your clouds, I said,
ghosts of my fathers! bend. Lay by the red terror of your course.
Receive the falling chief; whether he comes from a distant land, or
rises from the rolling sea. Let his robe of mist be near; his spear that
is form'd of a cloud. Place a half-extinguish'd meteor by his side, in
the form of a hero's sword. And oh! let his countenance be lovely, that
his friends may delight in his presence. Bend from your clouds, I said,
ghosts of my fathers, bend. Such was my song in Selma, to the lightly
trembling harp."]
How or why I know not, just at the moment, but I too muse and think of
my best friends in their distant homes--of William O'Connor, of
Maurice Bucke, of John Burroughs, and of Mrs. Gilchrist--friends of my
soul--stanchest friends of my other soul, my poems.