Page:Translations (1834).djvu/89

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MORVYTH’S PILGRIMAGE.
37

Unruffled be thy gentle breast,
Without one fear to break thy rest,
Till thou art safely wafted o’er
To bold Arvonia’s[1] tow’ring shore.
O! could I guard thy lovely form
Safe through yon desert of the storm[2],
Where fiercely rage encount’ring gales,
And whirlwinds rend th’ affrighted vales:
Sons of the tempest, cease to blow,
Sleep in your cavern’d glens below;
Ye streams that, with terrific sound,
Pour from your thousand hills around,
Cease with rude clamours to dismay
A gentle pilgrim on her way!
Peace! rude Traeth Mawr[3]; no longer urge
O’er thy wild strand the sweeping surge:
’Tis Morvyth on thy beach appears,
She dreads thy wrath—she owns her fears;
O! let the meek repentant maid
Securely through thy windings wade.
Traeth Bychan[4], check thy dreadful ire,
And bid thy foamy waves retire,

  1. ‘Arvonia,’ Carnarvonshire.
  2. ‘Desert of the storm,’ the Snowdon mountains in Carnarvonshire, supposed to be the highest in Britain.
  3. ‘Traeth Mawr’ (Anglicè, ‘Great Strand’), in Carnarvonshire, noted for its quicksands, and the sudden flowing of its tides; the passage over it is very dangerous, and not to be attempted without a guide, which, however, the pilgrims to St. David’s did in those days.
  4. ‘Traeth Bychan’ (Little Strand), in Merionethshire, a place equally dangerous.