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(From Madoc)
NOW hath Prince Madoc left the holy isle, | |
| And homeward to Aberfraw, through the wilds | |
| Of Arvon, bent his course. A little way | |
| He turned aside, by natural impulses | |
| Moved, to behold Cadwallon’s lonely hut. | 5 |
| That lonely dwelling stood among the hills, | |
| By a gray mountain-stream; just elevate | |
| Above the winter torrents did it stand, | |
| Upon a craggy bank; an orchard slope | |
| Arose behind, and joyous was the scene | 10 |
| In early summer, when those antic trees | |
| Shone with their blushing blossoms, and the flax | |
| Twinkled beneath the breeze its liveliest green. | |
| But save the flax-field and that orchard slope, | |
| All else was desolate, and now it wore | 15 |
| One sober hue; the narrow vale which wound | |
| Among the hills was gray with rocks, that peered | |
| Above the shallow soil; the mountain side | |
| Was loose with stones bestrewn, which oftentimes | |
| Clattered adown the steep, beneath the foot | 20 |
| Of straggling goat dislodged; or towered with crags, | |
| One day when winter’s work had loosened them, | |
| To thunder down. All things assorted well | |
| With that gray mountain hue; the low stone lines, | |
| Which scarcely seemed to be the work of man, | 25 |
| The dwelling rudely reared with stones unhewn, | |
| The stubble flax, the crooked apple-trees | |
| Gray with their fleecy moss and mistletoe, | |
| The white-barked birch now leafless, and the ash | |
| Whose knotted roots were like the rifted rock, | 30 |
| Through which they forced their way. Adown the vale, | |
| Broken by stones and o’er a stony bed, | |
| Rolled the loud mountain-stream. | |
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