Or prayer, from a chasten’d heart, to heaven—
Be the spot still hallow’d while Time shall reign,
Who hath made thee nature’s own again!
[327] A beautiful spring in the woods near St Asaph, formerly covered in with a chapel, now in ruins. It was dedicated to the Virgin, and, according to Pennant, much the resort of pilgrims.
[Those who only know the neighbourhood of St Asaph from travelling along its highways, can be little aware how much delightful scenery is attainable within walks of two or three miles’ distance from Mrs Hemans’s residence. The placid beauty of the Clwyd, and the wilder graces of the sister stream, the Elwy, particularly in the vicinity of “Our Lady’s Well,” and the interesting rocks and caves at Cefn, are little known to general tourists; though, by the lovers of her poetry, it will be remembered how sweetly she has apostrophised the
“Fount of the chapel with ages gray;”
and how tenderly, amid far different scenes, her thoughts reverted to the
“Cambrian river with slow music gliding,
By pastoral hills, old woods, and ruin’d towers.”
—(Sonnet to the River Clwyd.)