While they yet spoke, a bard, who sat upon the right hand of the prince,
prepared to sweep the string. He was in the prime of manhood. His
shining locks flowed in rich abundance upon his strong and graceful
shoulders. His eye expressed more of flame than gaiety, more of
enthusiasm than imagination. His brow, though manly, and, as it should
seem, by nature erect, bore an appearance of solemn and contemplative.
He had ever been distinguished by an attachment to solitude, and a love
for those grand and tremendous objects of uncultivated nature with which
his country abounded. His were the hanging precipice, and the foaming
cataract. His ear drank in the voice of the tempest; he was rapt in
attention to the roaring thunder. When the contention of the elements
seemed to threaten the destruction of the universe, when Snowdon bowed
to its deepest base, it was then that his mind was most filled with
sublime meditation. His lofty soul soared above the little war of
terrestrial objects, and rode expanded upon the wings of the winds. Yet
was the bard full of gentleness and sensibility; no breast was more
susceptible to the emotions of pity, no tongue was better skilled in the
soft and passionate touches of the melting and pathetic. He possessed a
key to unlock all the avenues of the heart.

Such was the bard, and this was the subject of his song. He told of a
dreadful famine, that laid waste the shores of the Menai. Heaven, not to
punish the shepherds, for, alas, what had these innocent shepherds done?
but in the mysterious wisdom of its ways, had denied the refreshing
shower, and the soft-descending dew. From the top of Penmaenmawr, as far
as the eye could reach, all was uniform and waste. The trees were
leafless, not one flower adorned the ground, not one tuft of verdure
appeared to relieve the weary eye. The brooks were dried up; their beds
only remained to tell the melancholy tale, Here once was water; the
tender lambs hastened to the accustomed brink, and lifted up their