Classic Poem

For me, true son of Erin, thou art rife,
Grand coast of Cornwall, cliff, and cave, and surge,
With glamour of the Kelt. Strong sons at strife
With wind and wave if healthier influence purge
Not wholly yet from wrecker's blood, nor merge
All in mild manners, yet there do not fail
Ancestral hero hearts and lives to urge
Their native virtue, that will never pale
In any strait, nor cringe, nor need to wear a veil.

Tired hearts' refreshment, friend, glad life was mine
Hearing rich music in Lamorna's bower;
And where thy whelming, tawny dunes incline
Saint Piran! waveward, many a siren hour
Me and my village friend through shine and shower
Crowned, pacing level sands by foamy flood;
Tintagel, thy dark legendary tower
Dreams o'er the seas of Tristram and Isoud;
By cliff and cavern gleam Romance's aery brood!

Toward thee, wild Treryn Dinas, oft I steer,
From whose weird form wake melancholy wings
Of cloudy memories divinely dear;
Thou lookest all unutterable things,
Haunt of some mystic atmosphere that clings
From faintly-imagined, vanished Druid time,
While a low wind, like one demented, sings,
Or murmurs a lorn, incoherent rhyme
Of mariners wrecked here since Earth was in her prime.

I love Bedruthan's frowning, storm-swept steep,
Saint Columb's minster-caverned purple gloom,
Where bosoms of the babe-waves heave in sleep:
Around Tol-Pedn's sombre height they boom;
Through tall fantastic arches glancing foam;
By grey Saint Levan, surge-ringed Rundlestone,
Whose bell wave-tolled hath learned sad sounds from Doom,
How often do I wander all alone,
With quest bewildered hearing the sea's monotone!