Qual vento a cui s'oppone o selva o colle,
Doppia nella contesa i soffj e l'ira;
Ma con fiato più placido e più molle
Per le campagne libere poi spira.
Come fra scoglj il mar spuma e ribolle:
E nell'aperto onde più chete aggira.
Così quanto contrasto avea men saldo,
Tanto scemava il suo furor Rinaldo.
Canto XX, stanza 58 (tr. Fairfax)
Gerusalemme Liberata (1581)
“I beheld their chief, tall as a glittering rock. His spear is a blasted pine. His shield the rising moon! He sat on the shore, like a cloud of mist on the silent hill!”
Book I
The Poems of Ossian, Fingal, an ancient Epic Poem
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
James Macpherson 46
Scottish writer, poet, translator, and politician 1736–1796Related quotes
“Floating to shore… riding a low moon… on a slow cloud.”
Prehistoric Smith, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
recalled by Carver Mead in Collective Electrodynamics: Quantum Foundations of Electromagnetism (2002), p. xix
"The Triumphs of Owen. A Fragment", from Mr. Evans's Specimens of the Welch Poetry (1764) http://www.thomasgray.org/cgi-bin/display.cgi?text=trow
"Written at Mauve Garden: Pine Wind Terrace" (tr. Y. N. Chang and Lewis C. Walmsley), in Sunflower Splendor: Three Thousand Years of Chinese Poetry, eds. Wu-chi Liu and Irving Yucheng Lo (1975), p. 477; also in The Luminous Landscape: Chinese Art and Poetry, ed. Richard Lewis (1981), p. 57.