The Rock of Cader Idris

I LAY on that rock where the storms have their dwelling,

The birthplace of phantoms, the home of the cloud;

Around it for ever deep music is swelling,

The voice of the mountain-wind, solemn and loud.

'Twas a midnight of shadows all fitfully streaming,

Of wild waves and breezes, that mingled their moan;

Of dim shrouded stars, as from gulfs faintly gleaming;

And I met the dread gloom of its grandeur alone.

I lay there in silence–a spirit came o'er me;

Man's tongue hath no language to speak what I saw:

Things glorious, unearthly, passed floating before me,

And my heart almost fainted with rapture and awe.

I viewed the dread beings around us that hover,

Though veil'd by the mists of mortality's breath;

And I called upon darkness the vision to cover,

For a strife was within me of madness and death.

I saw them–the powers of the wind and the ocean,

The rush of whose pinion bears onward the storms;

Like the sweep of the white-rolling wave was their motion,

I felt their dim presence,–but knew not their forms !

I saw them–the mighty of ages departed–

The dead were around me that night on the hill:

From their eyes, as they passed, a cold radiance they darted,–

There was light on my soul, but my heart's blood was chill.

I saw what man looks on, and dies–but my spirit

Was strong, and triumphantly lived through that hour;

And, as from the grave, I awoke to inherit

A flame all immortal, a voice, and a power !

Day burst on that rock with the purple cloud crested,

And high Cader Idris rejoiced in the sun;–

But O ! what new glory all nature invested,

When the sense which gives soul to her beauty was won !