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Yon promontory’s dusky height,
Enveloped all around in night,
Like luckless warrior whom his foes
Fiercely in hollow glen enclose,
I crossed myself and gave a cry
Of terror and of agony;
And then recalled to mind the rhyme
Of the great bard^[1] of olden time,
Who all in white and gold arrayed,
Into the stony cauldron went:
Like him by “lack of lore” betrayed,
Was I within yon thicket pent!
My way to Llanddwyn I had ta’en,
To find a cure for all my pain.
But he on whom our faith depends,
The Virgin’s Son, who watches ever,
And ever glories to deliver,
The bard in his despair befriends.
“Twelve signs^[2]” of hope, at his command,
With showers of splendour light the land;
Brightly arose upon my sight
The stars—those jewels of the night;
Majestic splendours—sparks of seven^[3]
Fires that illume the saints in heav’n;
Fruits of the dim moon’s glimm’rings cold,
Fair diadem, around her roll’d!

1. The allusion contained in these lines is extremely poetical, Taliesin, the Orpheus of Welsh poetry, is said to have been confined in a cauldron of stone, and to have been thus initiated in the mystical lore of Druidism.
2. An allusion to the twelve signs of the zodiac.
3. Charles’s Wain.