But a while
Here let me stand, and gaze upon the scene;
That headland, and those winding sands, and mark
The morning sunshine, on that very shore
Where once a child I wandered. Oh! return, 60
(I sigh) return a moment, days of youth,
Of childhood,--oh, return! How vain the thought,
Vain as unmanly! yet the pensive Muse,
Unblamed, may dally with imaginings;
For this wide view is like the scene of life,
Once traversed o'er with carelessness and glee,
And we look back upon the vale of years,
And hear remembered voices, and behold,
In blended colours, images and shades
Long passed, now rising, as at Memory's call, 70
Again in softer light.
I see thee not,
Home of my infancy--I see thee not,
Thou fane that standest on the hill alone,[7]
The homeward sailor's sea-mark; but I view
Brean Down beyond; and there thy winding sands,
Weston; and, far away, one wandering ship,
Where stretches into mist the Severn sea.
There, mingled with the clouds, old Cambria draws
Its stealing line of mountains, lost in haze; 80
There, in mid-channel, sit the sister holms,[8]
Secure and tranquil, though the tide's vast sweep, 82
As it rides by, might almost seem to rive
The deep foundations of the earth again,
Threatening, as once, resistless, to ascend
In tempest to this height, to bury here
Fresh-weltering carcases!
But, lo, the Cave!
Descend the steps, cut rudely in the rock,
Cautious. The yawning vault is at our feet! 90
Long caverns, winding within caverns, spread
On either side their labyrinths; all dark,
Save where the light falls glimmering on huge bones,
In mingled multitudes. Ere yet we ask
Whose bones, and of what animals they formed
The structure, when no human voice was heard
In all this isle; look upward to the roof
That silent drips, and has for ages dripped,
From which, like icicles, the stalactites
Depend: then ask of the geologist, 100
How nature, vaulting the rude chamber, scooped
Its vast recesses; he with learning vast
Will talk of limestone rock, of stalactites,
And oolites, and hornblende, and graywacke--
With sounds almost as craggy as the rock
Of which he speaks--feldspar, a