To Morvyth, When She Married Hunchback
Too long I’ve loved the fickle maid,
My love is turned to grief and pain;
In vain delusive hopes I stray’d,
Through days that ne’er will dawn again;
And she, in beauty like the dawn,
From me has now her heart withdrawn!
A constant suitor—on her ear
My sweetest melodies I pour’d;
Where’er she wander’d I was near;
For her whose face my soul ador’d
My wealth I madly spent in wine,
And gorgeous jewels of the mine.
I deck’d her arms with lovely chains,
With bracelets wove of slender gold;
I sang her charms in varied strains,
Her praise to every minstrel told:
The bards of distant Keri know
That she is spotless as the snow!
These proofs of love I hoped might bind
My Morvyth to be ever true:
Alas! to deep despair consign’d,
My bosom’s blighted hopes I rue,
And the base craft that gave her charms,
Oh, anguish! to another’s arms!
He adds that he does not know whether she was induced to desert him by fraud or by violence; but that, in either case, he is equally undone.
In another poem he again reproaches her with inconstancy and ingratitude, declaring that, like the cuckoo, he has had only one song—the name of Morvyth.
Satire on the Little Hunchback, or Eithig
Hunchback was a rich but deformed person, whom Morvyth had been forced to marry by her relations. He was the chief object of the poet’s satire.
Grief is every day my lot,
For her who regards me not;
Essyllt’s mien, but Eithig’s treasure,
I have spent firm love’s full measure
On cheeks whence I cannot wile,
Fickle beauty! one sweet smile.
‘Jaoler’ will not let me win
Her of eyebrow fine and thin.
If she seeks the social throng,
The abortion comes along;
Oh! that such a sordid elf
Should possess her to himself!
Old—too old for mirth and joys,
All delight the churl destroys!
Cuckoo, nightingale, he mocks,
Hates the linnet as the fox;
Never honours with his love
Rhymes and nuts and glimm’ring grove;
May’s dwarf warblers’ notes to hear,
Would his very bosom sear,
And the thrush’s conversation
Is his very detestation!
Wretch—decrepid—harp or hound,
Love from Eithig never found!
Eithig, with the livid face,
Like a man of Irish race.
Him I will remember well,
Hate him more than I can tell;
Never will I pay my vows
But to her he calls his spouse.
When she dies—upon the maid
Earth and stones and withes be laid;
Sods—eight oxen load I’ll pour
(Borrowed oxen) on the boor;
In my own paternal field,
Him his length of earth I’d yield.
‘Beauty’ then shall be my mate,
While Siluria’s churl in state,
In his ditch and hempen clothes,
On his steed of alder goes.
Oh! if I had but my way,
Would the ruffian live a day?
If he were in earth array’d,
Should I sorrow—would the maid?
The Dream
The bard is visited by a terrific vision. He awakes, and deplores Morvyth’s marriage with Hunchback.
As yester eve I journey’d late,
To shun the edged and naked blast,
Amid the fern my limbs I cast,
And as I lay it was my fate
(The earth my couch, the grove my bower,)
To fall asleep—I slept an hour.
And there I saw a dream of fear:
Sudden my place of slumber near
A pallid flood appears to quiver,
And rolling on to threat me seems
With billows mighty as the streams
That rise in Taf’s o’erflooded river;
Like bulls, in fury and in might,
The breakers seem intent to mite;
Out from a hundred glens they speed;
Then was I desolate indeed!
Into the billows rough and wild
I fell, with many a frantic call—
Hoar-headed billows steeply piled—
Alas! it was a dreadful fall!
And with the breakers fierce and strong
I buffetted and struggled long;
And oft I prayed to Christ to save
And give me strength against the wave.
But ceaseless struggles robbed at length
My heart of hope, my limbs of strength;
My breast the rocks of ocean tore,
And ocean’s host of billows hoar.
I saw the day-light disappear,
And night with hideous gloom draw near;
The wind with loud and wrathful shout
Waged battle with the deluge stout.
I rode upon the billow’s breast,
Until at last, by waves oppressed,
I sunk as evening closed around,
And death amid the darkness found.
At dawn awaking from the pain
And terror that had racked my brain,
With mournful heart I learned too well
The meaning of that dream to spell.
Long years a constant suit I’ve paid
To Morvyth, the ungrateful maid.
* * * * *
Oh! I could read the vision well!
Her kindred heartless hostile men,
These are the floods that on me fell
From every hill and hollow glen;
These are the waves I had to fight
In that dread vision of the night!
And still, fantastic fool! I tread
Too deep, too deep, as in the dream;
A weight of waters o’er my head,
Still strive to swim against the stream!
Again I’ll plunge—but not in sleep—
For ever in Taf’s billows deep!
To the Wind
The bard asks the wind to be his envoy to Morvyth, the lady of his love. This poem appears to have been written when the poet was imprisoned by the influence of Morvyth’s relations, in consequence of his having rescued her from Hunchback, (see the Life of Davyth ap Gwilym at the end of this volume). This circumstance gives great beauty to the contrast which the poet draws between his own situation, and the liberty and irresistible power of the element he addresses.
Bodiless glory of the sky,
That wingless, footless, stern and loud,
Leap’st on thy starry path on high,
And chauntest ’mid the mountain cloud;
Fleet as the wave! and fetterless as light!
Tell to my body’s heart, “mine is the dungeon’s night!”
My beauteous native land to me
Is lost—as to the blinded sight;
But despot may not grapple thee,
Thou mock’st the falchion’s gleamy might,
And laugh’st, amid the citadels of morn,
The shield of pathless rock and frenzied flood to scorn!
Wind of the North! no craft may chain,
No brand may scorch thy goblin wing;
Thou scatterest with thy giant mane
The leafy palaces of Spring;
And as the naked woodlands sink and soar,
Liftest thy anthem ’mid a thousand forests’ roar!
Phantom of terror and delight!
Thousands have heard thy airy feet,
When with wild boyhood’s playful sleight
Thou fling’st the breakers’ tiny sleet;
Or o’er the storm—the oak’s dismantled height,
Seekest thy couch of waves unsearchable as night!
The Sword
Shapely burden of my hand!
Foul disgrace is never nigh,
When I clasp my long bright brand,
Girt by Heaven upon my thigh:
Proud protector in the fight,
Ranging fierce, and wild and bright.
One there is my heart detests,
Songs and songsters he infests
With a cunning enmity;
Fat and taciturn, and foul,
Oxlike in his heavy scowl,
And his rank obesity:
Now with silent frowns he tries,
Now with threats, the bard to scare.
Wrathful weapon, noble prize!
While my hand thy blade can rear,
All his terrors I defy!
Cold at midnight may I lie,
If on charger I retreat
From yon wretch, or on my feet!
Shall we not our vengeance claim
On that man of hate and shame—
Eithig—who so foxlike knows
How to skulk before his foes,
Scourge and spoiler of the maid?
Come with me, my trusty blade;
Brightest shingle of my roof,
As the rock thou art rust proof!
In the turmoil of the fight,
Beauteous omen of delight
To the ravens—from thy blade
Shrink Deira’s hosts dismayed;
Double-lip’d, and beaked with ire,
Like the lightning’s edge of fire!
In thy hollow sheath repose,
My defender from my foes.
Whereso’er thy master’s hand
Plunges with thee, brilliant brand,
Despot of the battle ground!
Thou a path for him hast found.
Should some foes in secret dwell
In the forest citadel,
Thou shalt flame, impetuous steel,
Wildly as the mimic wheel,
Which the nurse, from brand on blaze,
Whirls before her infant’s gaze.
Should the foeman cross my path,
E’en Cyhelyn’s shield would fail
To protect the foe from scath;
Should my sword his life assail,
Thou shalt save me, rapier good,
From the hornets of the wood.
Many a long, long holiday,
Through the woodlands I will stray;
In the forests will rejoice,
With the lady of my choice;
Though, whilst in the woods I stray,
All my riches melt away,
And my friends indignant say,
They my steps too oft behold
Near the bank that keeps my gold.
Gentle maid, a gen’rous mind,
To its love is ever kind!
To the Ship
In which Hunchback sailed to France in company with a detachment of three hundred men, under the command of Rhys Gwgan, to join the army of Edward III. in that country. The bard expresses a wish that Hunchback may be drowned on the voyage.
The following extract from Dr. Lingard’s History of England furnishes an interesting comment on this poem:—“Among them (i. e. the foot soldiers of Edward III.’s army) was constantly a large proportion of Welshmen armed with lances, and dressed in uniform at the king’s expense. These proved of great utility wherever the country was mountainous and ill adapted to the operations of cavalry. The muster-roll of the army which besieged Calais is still extant; it included 4474 Welsh foot; each man received fourpence a day, which was double the pay of the rest of the infantry, which was only twopence per man.”
To-day on high achievement bent,
With Rhys to join the wars he went,
And radiant Morvyth’s kin lament—
Whilst I upon the Virgin call,
From the fierce shock of France to save
The barons bold, and warriors brave,
That marched from Cambria—may they all
(Brethren in battle—ever first
Through breach in hostile walls to burst)
Home from the South return—save one!
Thou last, a drone, O Gwgan’s son!
Amid thy proud and warlike guard,
If thou retainest in thy band
The odious foe of Morvyth’s bard,
And all the bards of all our land.
How oft with indignation sore
I’ve fled the hunchbacked elf of yore,
Humped like the crooked elder tree,
The tyrant of the maid and me!
Yon wild grey ship chafed by the tide,
If e’er the sluggard mount her side,
If e’er she take her watery road
With such an inauspicious load,
Alas! her flowing sails will sink,
Deeply of ocean’s brine to drink,
The spiral surges of the sea
The raiment of her masts will be!
Fling from her deck the luckless thing,
And let the swine-souled monster sleep
Beneath the quicksands of the deep!
O generous billow, ocean’s wing!
Soon wouldst thou pay the debt I owe
To Jealousy, the poet’s foe.
Like bird of ocean he would whirl
From wave to wave, and shoal to shoal,
As the wild surges fiercely curl
Around the shores, O sordid soul!
May Hwynyn, demon of the sea,
Thy headsman on the voyage be!
Oh, Rhys! illustrious warrior, thou
Mayst free me from my foeman now;
Let not the hollow boat divide
The poet from his glorious bride:
And thou, cross-bowman true and good,
Thou shooter with the faultless wood,
Send me an arrow through his brain,
(Who of his fate will e’er complain!)
Then from thy quiver take and aim
A second arrow through his frame;
Well will the varlet’s corpse be known
By the stiff beard so scantly sown;
Haste! with thy stirrup-fashioned bow,
To lay the hideous varlet low!
Long may he roam on distant shore—
Ill luck attend upon the boor;
The poet’s anger will not burn,
E’en should he ne’er again return!
To-night the lady of my choice
With me will laugh, with me rejoice;
With me confess, with me will pray,
That Eithig of malignant tongue,
The churlish foe of joy and song,
In foreign realms may ever stay.