The Rolling Saint
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;
And every man that passes
Adds one more—
The years it has been growing
Verge on a hundred score.
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?