There are but few objects to
distract their sight, and their life is as unencumbered as the
course of the stars they gaze at.
"The wrathful kings, on cairns apart,
Look forward from behind their shields,
And mark the wandering stars,
That brilliant westward move."
It does not cost much for these heroes to live; they do not want
much furniture. They are such forms of men only as can be seen
afar through the mist, and have no costume nor dialect, but for
language there is the tongue itself, and for costume there are
always the skins of beasts and the bark of trees to be had. They
live out their years by the vigor of their constitutions. They
survive storms and the spears of their foes, and perform a few
heroic deeds, and then
"Mounds will answer questions of them,
For many future years."
Blind and infirm, they spend the remnant of their days listening
to the lays of the bards, and feeling the weapons which laid
their enemies low, and when at length they die, by a convulsion
of nature, the bard allows us a short and misty glance into
futurity, yet as clear, perchance, as their lives had been.
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