12S FROM EDINBURGH TO THE ANTARCTIC 
is the poet for sailors and soldiers and hunters, for all 
men who have lived under open skies and slept on the 
earth's bare breast. His are the tales that mothers read 
to their children if they would rear heroes and noble 
daughters — of the days when our fathers drove the 
Romans from behind their stone walls, of the days when 
men were few and great in soul and body, and lived full 
lives, with music and art and hunting and fishing, when 
the land was unploughcd, nor yet plagued with cities and 
overrun with a too prolific people. Here in the rolling 
forties, where the driv- 
ing rain-clouds sweep 
the sea with their dark 
trailing skirts, where 
the gloom of the hail- 
storm alternates with 
flashes of sunlight and 
rainbow, where the 
sound of many waters 
is always, here one can 
read Ossian, his words 
increase in meaning as 
the wind rises and hums 
through the rigging. 
. . . Long his voice has 
sounded through the dim aisles of the past. Hard it is 
to understand at first, meaningless as wind in mountain 
tops. Then as we listen our souls rise and the hero 
bard speaks from his cloud, far distant, filling our hearts 
with joy, with the glory of the past, listening to 
