Page:The first and last journeys of Thoreau - lately discovered among his unpublished journals and manuscripts.djvu/150

 wait but for one heroic deed. The earth is a vast arena,—a sand plain or heath for heroic actions. The bard is sufficiently great and true to himself to make his thought take place of everything else. There is for the time no other philosophy, no other poetry.

November 21.

The philosophy of Ossian is contained in the opening of the third duan of Ca-Lodin,—

Whence have sprung the things that are, etc.

The only vicious and immoral is an unsuccessful and ignoble warrior. He dies and is forgotten,—

Strangers come to build a tower, etc.

Again the philosophy of life and the simple forcible statement of the thought,—

The size and grandeur of the machinery is again illustrated by,—

Even Ossian, the hero-bard, seems to regret the strength of his race,— [102]