Under the crags of Teiriwch,

The door-sills of the Sun,

Where God has left the bony earth

Just as it was begun;

Where clouds sail past like argosies

Breasting the crested hills

With mainsail and foretopsail

That the thin breeze fills;

With ballast of round thunder,

And anchored with the rain;

With a long shadow sounding

The deep, far plain:

Where rocks are broken playthings

By petulant gods hurled,

And Heaven sits a-straddle

The roof-ridge of the World:

—Under the crags of Teiriwch

Is a round pile of stones,

Large stones, small stones,

—White as old bones;

Some from high places

Or from the lake’s shore;

For in the Cave of Teiriwch

That scarce holds a sheep,

Where plovers and rock-conies

And wild things sleep,

A woman lived for ninety years

On bilberries and moss

And lizards and small creeping things,

And carved herself a cross:

But wild hill robbers

Found the ancient saint

And dragged her to the sunlight,

Making no complaint.

Too old was she for weeping,

Too shrivelled and too dry:

She crouched and mumle-mumled

And mumled to the sky.

No breath had she for wailing,

Her cheeks were paper-thin:

She was, for all her holiness,

As ugly as sin.

They cramped her in a barrel

—All but her bobbing head

—And rolled her down from Teiriwch

Until she was dead:

They took her out and buried her

—Just broken bits of bone

And rags and skin, and over her

Set one small stone:

But if you pass her sepulchre

And add not one thereto

The ghost of that old murdered Saint

Will roll in front of you

The whole night through.

The clouds sail past in argosies

And cold drips the rain:

The whole world is far and high

Above the tilted plain.

The silent mists float eerily,

And I am here alone:

Dare I pass the place by

And cast not a stone?