“When all arrived in one spot, Then courteously spoke the ‘King of Youth,’ And said, ‘This is Ossin,’ the son of Fionn, The gentle consort of ‘golden-headed Niamh!’” He spent a long time in the “Land of Youth;” but in the midst of its calm, waveless existence, he longs for his old life with the Féinne, and for a sight once more of his lost brothers-in-arms:— “I asked leave of the King, And of my kind spouse—golden-headed Niamh, To go to Erinn back again, To see Fionn and his great host.” She reluctantly consents to Ossian’s return; and the parting is bitterly sad to both:— “I looked up into her countenance with compassion, And streams of tears run from my eyes, O Patrick! thou wouldest have pitied her Tearing the hair of the golden head.” She warns him on his return never to alight off the white steed, or— “Thou wilt be an old man, withered and blind.” On his arrival in Erin he sought, with a doubtful and trembling heart, for the Fianna. He soon met a great troop of men and women, who saluted him kindly, and were surprised at the bulk of his person, his form, and appearance. He asked them whether Fionn was alive, and whether any disaster had swept the Fianna away. He was told that a “young maiden” came for Fionn, and that he went away with her to the “Land of Youth:”— “When I mysel heard that report, That Fionn did not live, nor any of the Fianna, I was seized with weariness and great sorrow, And I was full of melancholy after them.” The poet immediately betakes himself to “Almhuin” of great exploits in broad Leinster; but could not see the “Court of Fionn,” and— “There was not in its place in truth, But weeds, chick-weeds, and nettles.” While passing through the Glen of the Thrushes he sees three hundred men before him: their leader cries for help to the bard, whose chivalrous instincts are roused, and who, forgetting the strict injunctions of Niamh not to touch the earth, alighted and relieved them from their difficulty, performing the most marvellous exploits. But alas!— “No sooner did I come down, Than the white steed took fright; He went then on his way, And I, in sorrow, both weak and feeble.” He had been a long time in the “Land of Youth,” and intended going back to that country, perpetually “under the full bloom;” but now he could not. His stay in that land reminds us of the seven sleepers of Ephesus. He tells the everlastingly occurring Patrick— “I spent a time protracted in length, Three hundred years and more, Until I thought ’twould be my desire To see Fionn and the Fianna alive.” The great prince-poet, as everywhere represented, is in his last days poor and blind. After declaring to Patrick that—