Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
England: Vols. I–IV. 1876–79.
The Wilds of Arvon
By Robert Southey (1774–1843)N
And homeward to Aberfraw, through the wilds
Of Arvon, bent his course. A little way
He turned aside, by natural impulses
Moved, to behold Cadwallon’s lonely hut.
That lonely dwelling stood among the hills,
By a gray mountain-stream; just elevate
Above the winter torrents did it stand,
Upon a craggy bank; an orchard slope
Arose behind, and joyous was the scene
In early summer, when those antic trees
Shone with their blushing blossoms, and the flax
Twinkled beneath the breeze its liveliest green.
But save the flax-field and that orchard slope,
All else was desolate, and now it wore
One sober hue; the narrow vale which wound
Among the hills was gray with rocks, that peered
Above the shallow soil; the mountain side
Was loose with stones bestrewn, which oftentimes
Clattered adown the steep, beneath the foot
Of straggling goat dislodged; or towered with crags,
One day when winter’s work had loosened them,
To thunder down. All things assorted well
With that gray mountain hue; the low stone lines,
Which scarcely seemed to be the work of man,
The dwelling rudely reared with stones unhewn,
The stubble flax, the crooked apple-trees
Gray with their fleecy moss and mistletoe,
The white-barked birch now leafless, and the ash
Whose knotted roots were like the rifted rock,
Through which they forced their way. Adown the vale,
Broken by stones and o’er a stony bed,
Rolled the loud mountain-stream.