'But, PENMAENMAWR! a better fate was thine, Through all its shades, than that which darkened mine; No quick thoughts thrilled through thy gigantic mass Of woe for what might be, or is, or was; Thou hadst no memory of the glorious hour When Britain rested on thy giant power; Thou hadst no feeling for the verdant slope That leant on thee as man's heart leads on hope; The pastures, chequered o'er with cot and tree, Though thou wert guardian, got no smile from thee; Old ocean's wrath their charms might overwhelm, But thou could'st still keep thy unshaken realm-- While I felt flashes of an inward feeling As fierce as those thy craggy form revealing In nights of blinding gleams, when deafening roar Hurls back thy echo to old Mona's shore. I knew a flower, whose leaves were meant to bloom Till Death should snatch it to adorn a tomb, Now, blanching 'neath the blight of hopeless grief, With never blooming, and yet living leaf; A flower on which my mind would wish to shine, If but one beam could break from mind like mine. I had an ear which could on accents dwell That might as well say "perish!" as "farewell!" An eye which saw, far off, a tender form, Beaten, unsheltered, by affliction's storm; An arm--a lip--that trembled to embrace My angel's gentle breast and sorrowing face, A mind that clung to Ouse's fertile side While tossing--objectless--on Menai's tide!
'Oh, Soul! that draw'st yon mighty hill and me Into communion of vague unity, Tell me, can I obtain the stony brow That fronts the storm, as much unbroken now As when it once upheld the fortress proud, Now gone, like its own morning cap of cloud? Its breast is stone. Can I have one of steel, To endure--inflict--defend--yet never feel? It stood as firm when haughty Edward's word Gave hill and dale to England's fire and sword, As when white sails and steam-smoke tracked the sea, And all the world breathed peace, but waves and me.
'Let me, like it, arise o'er mortal care, All woes sustain, yet never know despair; Unshrinking face the grief I now deplore, And stand, through storm and shine, like moveless PENMAENMAWR!'
These lines are shadowed, like all his other writings, with the grief that day and night oppressed him. Throughout the theme, his eager yearning for mental quiet is finely expressed; and in it he contrasts the strength and calm of the everlasting hill in its chequered history, and in the ceaseless changes, and the lights and shadows that fall upon it, with his own wild and stormy existence; the lady, whose charms have bewildered his imagination, supplying him with a subject for sorrowful recollections. The giant hill is the mighty image with which his perturbed soul communes, and he implores for strength to enable him to rise superior to his misfortunes, and to face, like 'moveless Penmaenmawr,' the storm, adversity, and ruin that threaten him. But there was little likelihood of the lady seeing these lines.