Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

Naïd, receive my votive wreath!
The woodbine's interwoven locks
That hid their clustering growth thy cliffs beneath;
Fresh gather'd from the gelid cave
The moss that drops the crystal of thy wave;

With the dry lychen's shoot that grew
Upon the steep side of thy pendant rocks;
And now I blend with closest care,
While the prest fragrance floats in air,
The wild thyme's tender flow'r,
That from the bee's light feathers fell
A seed within thy grassy cell,
What time the restless wand'rer flew,
Winding his plaintive hum along thy nightly bow'r.

II.

Clyda, when late the grey-eyed dawn
Gleam'd on the dewy lawn,
And all the distant hills around,
With the blue mist's wreath'd volumes crown'd,
Flung forth their incense to the God of day,
For thy wild haunts I left my wonted way,
Where oft with frequent pause I toil'd to climb
The mountain brow sublime,

Hanging with giddy rapture o'er the view,
As gradual from the world the veil of night withdrew.

III.

Now while the sounds that down thy water move,
With lengthen'd swell of melody repeat
The music of the grove;
Not with rude steps my pilgrim feet
Shall rouse the clamours of thy mountain's hoar;
Nor shall these hands I bend to take
The icy stream my thirst to slake,
Profane thy miny treasure's secret seat,
And draw from its dark bed the unsun'd ore.

IV.

I come not worn with hopeless grief
To pillow on thy rocks my lonely head,
Nor by pale melancholy led
To seek in dreary wilds a sad relief;

But here to muse unseen within the cave,
Dim'd by the broad oak's depth of shade,
Whose twisted roots beneath the flood display'd,
Are turn'd to living stone:
From the bold arch sublimely thrown
In cluster'd columns the bright spar depends,
And noiseless 'mid the eddies of the wave
Slow down their lengthen'd points the ling'ring drop descends.

V.

Hid in the lap of solitude,
In secret glens and caverns rude,
Where'er the lone enthusiast bends
A visionary world attends,
And airy shapes advance, and airy voices sound.
But oh, how blest! if aught of ancient worth
Shed inspiration round,
To slumber on the hallow'd earth,

While Fancy waves her pictur'd wings on high,
And forms of ancient days flash on the tranced eye.

VI.

Though wild trees tremble o'er yon tow'r
Of old where Gothic banners hung,
And peace has scatter'd many a flow'r
On the rent walls in ruins flung,
Bright pageants of the poet's dream,
Prompting the high heroic theme,
Swarm round the castle's shiver'd head,
That beetling o'er the cliff a fragment lies;
Aloft th'aërial battlements arise,
And on the gleaming rocks the steel-clad warriors tread.

VII.

Not such at haunted eve,
Poor shepherd of the dale!
The visions that thy wilder'd sight deceive,
When wing'd with fear thy footstep hies

Along yon craggy brow,
Where the bridge trembles o'er the gulph below;
Amid the foamy tides
That burst through the dark mountain's riven sides,
Thou view'st the shapeless spectre rise,
While shrieks of loud lament and horror load the gale.

VIII.

Spirit! who from thy wat'ry grave
Sad wander'st through the gloomy cave,
That erst re-echoed to thy yell,
When hurl'd from yon impending height,
The deep flood, as thy bleeding body fell,
Mournfully sounded on the ear of night,
Break not death's deep repose—
Hence! in my breast no passion glows,

Save such whose temp'rate pow'r refin'd
Unites in golden chains the mind,
Form'd by the hand of chaste connubial love.
Naïd! receive my votive wreath!
The pure delights that in my bosom move,
Rise from the thoughts thy haunts inspiring breathe.
Nymph! with regret I leave thy soothing cell,
Clyda, to virtue dear, dear to the muse—farewell!

A mountain torrent, near Abergavenny, which winding along a stony channel, among steep hills, in many parts luxuriantly covered to the water's brink with wild trees and underwood, is precipitated into various waterfalls, from the interruption of vast masses of rock that cross the current in all directions.

The most remarkable fall, both for its height and romantic beauty, rushes through a cavity of the rock into a pool call'd the Pult-y-Comb, or the Dog's Pool, from a tradition, that the body of a woman who had been seduced, murdered, and afterwards flung into the river from a bridge that directly impends over the pool, had been there discovered by her dog.