Rhys Goch to the Fox

Ah! birch tree, with the verdant locks!
And reckless mind—long hast thou been
A wand’rer from thy native rocks;
With canopy of tissue green,
And stem that mid the sylvan scene
A sceptre of the forest stood—
Thou art a traitress to the wood!
How oft, in May’s short nights of old,
To my love-messenger and me
Thou didst a couch of leaves unfold!
Thou wert a house of melody,—
Proud music soared from every bough;
Ah! those who loved thee sorrow now!
Thy living branches teemed and rang
With every song the woodlands know,
And every woodland flow’ret sprang
To life—thy spreading tent below.
Proud guardian of the public way,
Such wert thou, while thou didst obey
The counsel of my beauteous bride—
And in thy native grove reside!
But now thy stem is mute and dark,
No more by lady’s reverence cheered;
Rent from its trunk, torn from its park,
The luckless tree again is reared—
(Small sign of honour or of grace!)
To mark the parish market-place!
Long as St. Idloes’ town shall be
A patroness of poesy—
Long as its hospitality
The bard shall freely entertain,
My birch! thy lofty stature shall remain!

The girl of nobler loveliness
Than countess decked in golden dress,
No longer dares to give her plight
To meet the bard at dawn or night!
To the blythe moon he may not bear
The maid, whose cheeks the daylight wear—
She fears to answer to his call
At midnight, underneath yon wall—
Nor can he find a birchen bower
To screen her in the morning hour;
And thus the summer days are fleeting
Away, without the lovers meeting!
But stay! my eyes a bower behold,
Where maid and poet yet may meet,
Its branches are arrayed in gold,
Its boughs the sight in winter greet
With hues as bright, with leaves as green,
As summer scatters o’er the scene.
(To lure the maiden) from that brake,
For her a vesture I will make,
Bright as the ship of glass of yore,
That Merddin o’er the ocean bore;
O’er Dyved’s hills there was a veil
In ancient days—(so runs the tale);
And such a canopy to me
This court, among the woods, shall be;
Where she, my heart adores, shall reign,
The princess of the fair domain.
    To her, and to her poet’s eyes,
This arbour seems a paradise;
Its every branch is deftly strung
With twigs and foliage lithe and young,
And when May comes upon the trees
To paint her verdant liveries,
Gold on each thread-like sprig will glow,
To honour her who reigns below.
Green is that arbour to behold,
And on its withes thick showers of gold!
Joy to the poet and the maid,
Whose paradise is yonder shade!
Oh! flowers of noblest splendour, these
Are summer’s frost-work on the trees!
A field the lovers now possess,
With saffron o’er its verdure roll’d,
A house of passing loveliness,
A fabric of Arabia’s gold—
Bright golden tissue, glorious tent,
Of him who rules the firmament,
With roof of various colours blent!
An angel, mid the woods of May,
Embroidered it with radiance gay—
That gossamer with gold bedight—
Those fires of God—those gems of light!
’Tis sweet those magic bowers to find,
With the fair vineyards intertwined;
Amid the woods their jewels rise,
Like gleam of starlight o’er the skies—
Like golden bullion, glorious prize!
How sweet the flowers that deck that floor,
In one unbroken glory blended—
Those glittering branches hovering o’er—
Veil by an angel’s hand extended.
Oh! if my love will come, her bard
Will, with his care, her footsteps guard,
There, where no stranger dares to pry,
Beneath yon Broom’s green canopy!

Wretched owlet! worthless bird!
Always are her accents heard;
She must ever wail and cry—
While the stars are in the sky!
I can never rest or sleep
For the noise she loves to keep!
With the bat she lives together,
In the rainy—snowy weather!
Every day my ear she tears
With her shrieks and hideous airs—
Every night all slumber flies
(At her wild salute) my eyes;
I am vexed, the long night through,
With her vile “to-hoo to-hoo!”
I believe that with these yells,
She the dogs of night impels!
Filthy and untoward fowl,
With fat head, and hideous howl,
Forehead broad, and ruddy breast—
Foe of mice, with mouse-hued vest!
Worthless thing with formal port,
Dingy hue, and leafy court;
With demure and solemn face—
Goblin of the feathered race!
Her each bird a buffet gives—
It is strange that still she lives!
More she utters on the hill,
Than the nightingale—at night;
But in hollow tree, she still
Guards her head—in the day-light!
Bird of Gwyn ap Neath! too long,
Her unseemly form I’ve known;
Dolt of darkness! whose harsh song
By the thieves is deemed their own;
How I hate her luckless tone!
Never shall I want a lay,
Though her voice were far away.
Firebrands, till the frost is past,
In each ivy-bush I’ll cast!

Creature of the world of gloom!
Owlet with the dusky plume!
With a song-like kitten’s cries,
Less than bunch of down in size;
Countess, delicate and slight,
Of the mountain rampart white!
May the shaft thy forehead tear;
Huntress fierce in glen remote,
Face of frown and grief of note!
OWL.
Spare! Oh, youth, for mercy spare!
Leave to me the woodlands—where
I am destined by my fate,
To endure the agony
Of sad penance—and the hate
Of all birds beneath the sky!
I must suffer in the night
Cold and mourning—in the light
Fear and wandering and flight!
POET.
Bird of wondrous sorrows, thou
With the countenance of age,
Wilt thou to the bard avow
What thy name and lineage?
OWL.
By the men of noble race,
I am called “Unrivalled Face.”
At the banquetings of yore,
I the name “Flower Aspect” bore;
I was daughter of a chief,
Proudly through the land of Mon,
As the son of Meirchion known,
Rich in golden stores—
BARD.
    Oh, grief!
Maiden, who art called “the Morn;”
Who then wrought this fearful change?
OWL.
Gwdion, son of Don, in scorn,
With his wand of magic sway,
Changed my beauty’s proud array,
For the aspect you behold!
In revenge, because of old
Gronwy, Pevyr, Garanhir,
Of tall form and noble cheer,
Penllyn’s lord—to me was dear.

Sweet holly grove, that soarest
A woodland fort, an armed bower!
In front of all the forest
Thy coral-loaded branches tower.
Thou shrine of love, whose depth defies
The axe—the tempest of the skies;
Whose boughs in winter’s frost display
The brilliant livery of May!
Grove from the precipice suspended,
Like pillars of some holy fane;
With notes amid thy branches blended,
Like the deep organ’s solemn strain.
* * * * *
House of the birds of Paradise,
Round fane impervious to the skies;
On whose green roof two nights of rain
May fiercely beat, and beat in vain!
I know thy leaves are ever scathless;
The hardened steel as soon will blight;
When every grove and hill are pathless
With frosts of winter’s lengthened night,
No goat from Havren’s banks I ween,
From thee a scanty meal may glean!
Though Spring’s bleak wind with clamour launches
His wrath upon thy iron spray;
Armed holly tree! from thy firm branches
He will not wrest a tithe away!
Chapel of verdure, neatly wove,
Above the summit of the grove!

Woe to the bard who feels the hate
So oft—of unpropitious fate!
Last night as from the inn I came
To her who wears the clear moon’s flame,
In thought exulting—and beguiled
By spirits boisterous and wild—
O’er savage hills I took my way,
Amid the wintry tempest’s fray;
The snow came pelting fierce and fast,
Hurled in thick vollies by the blast;
Drifts lined the mountains and the rocks—
And every bower had frosty locks!
The blinded bard, amid those bowers,
Laughed not, I ween—as in Spring’s hours!
As vexed and goaded on by fear,
I hurried thus in full career,
I marked not that the landscape’s hue
At every step still whiter grew!
I marked not from afar the site
Where lurked that most unhallowed wight,
Taught by the pangs, with which I groan,
Since then the wretch too well I’ve known,
By his base treach’ry tripp’d and thrown!
By his unwieldy form of snow
Roughly arrested in my track,
Onward, like arrow from a bow,
I sprung—then fell, and broke my back!
Detested form! that—like the trunk
Of aged tree—the bard o’erthrew;
How like thou art in form and hue
To an old miser—or a monk,
A miser, and his bags of gold!
Woe to the miscreant who rolled
Thy figure from the snow, to be
A fence for “Hunchback” against me;
A fence to Hunchback, caitiff rude,
A plague to all the neighbourhood!
Thou loaf-shaped heap—thou rustic fort,
To break my legs—ill mannered sport!
Meal-coloured castle—snow-white pump,
Reared (where none need thee) on the hill;
Thou frigid post—thou frosty stump,
Ah, thou hast wrought me grievous ill!
And wrung with thy untimely blows
Blood from my feet and from my nose!
Thou rugged heap, thou cumbrous mass,
That wilt not let a stranger pass;
Like a bear’s skull—may the sun’s light
Melt and disperse thy wintry height,
And break thy snowy forts—and may
The gallows tree the wretch repay,
The man of infamy and guilt,
Who thy untoward turrets built!
Ah, fatal haste! that made me break
My nose for beauteous Morvyth’s sake!