Treryn Castle

A MONARCH, who had lost his crown,
As crowns have been so often lost,
By kindred treachery, or worse,
The price his own fond blindness cost,
Methinks were fitting guest to be
Alone, thou rugged scene, with thee;
Magnificent, yet desolate,
In harmony with thought and fate.

The sky is dark with gathered clouds,
As if night struggled still with day;
A single sea-bird seems to bear
The sunshine on his wings away;
The heavy rocks o’er-hang the flood,
As if the sacrifice of blood,
Poured by the Druids, left the gloom,
That ever haunts the human tomb.

Their shadow falls, while at their feet
Dashes and foams the restless main,
Still beating like the human heart,
And, like that beating, still in vain :
Aye, lean upon the granite stone,
And muse o’er empires overthrown;
How thrones first tremble, and then fall,
And for the purple spreads the pall.

There’s nothing here to win the eye,
Or waken calm and pleasant thought;
No early flowers, no springing leaves,
Are ever here by summer brought.
The stormy sky, the sullen sea,
Spread out in drear immensity:
Oh! suited to man’s thoughtful mood,
It seems ambition’s solitude.

Treryn Castle is the name given to some of those gigantic rocks, from which the idea of architecture would seem to have originated; though it is remarkable, that most mighty edifices have always been the work of flat countries. Perhaps those most accustomed to the presence of rock and mountain, shrank abashed before them. There are old legends which give the Druids Treryn Castle; but, as Dr. Paris observes, “Geologists readily discover, that the only chisel ever employed has been the tooth of time—the only artist engaged, the elements.”