Felicia Dorothea Hemans

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 forever deep music is swelling,
  The voice of the mountain wind solemn and loud.
’T was a midnight of shadows all fitfully streaming,
  Of wild waves and breezes, that mingle 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 veiled 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!