Soft music came to mine ear. It was like the rising breeze, that whirls, at first, the thistle’s beard; then flies, dark-shadowy, over the grass. It was the maid of Füarfed wild: she raised the nightly song; for she knew that my soul was a stream, that flowed at pleasant sounds.
James Macpherson (1736-1796).
Macpherson alleged that he had discovered poems by the Gaelic bard, Ossian, who lived in the Third Century, and he published translations of them. Actually the poems were his own, but they were beautiful and had a considerable effect upon literature.
I dare not guess: but in this life
Of error, ignorance, and strife,
Where nothing is, but all things seem,
And we the shadows of the dream.
It is a modest creed, and yet