When
Mac-Roine was slain,
"His soul departed to his warlike sires,
To follow misty forms of boars,
In tempestuous islands bleak."
The hero's cairn is erected, and the bard sings a brief
significant strain, which will suffice for epitaph and biography.
"The weak will find his bow in the dwelling,
The feeble will attempt to bend it."
Compared with this simple, fibrous life, our civilized history
appears the chronicle of debility, of fashion, and the arts of
luxury. But the civilized man misses no real refinement in the
poetry of the rudest era. It reminds him that civilization does
but dress men. It makes shoes, but it does not toughen the soles
of the feet. It makes cloth of finer texture, but it does not
touch the skin. Inside the civilized man stand the savage still
in the place of honor. We are those blue-eyed, yellow-haired
Saxons, those slender, dark-haired Normans.
The profession of the bard attracted more respect in those days
from the importance attached to fame. It was his province to
record the deeds of heroes.
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