A trio of poems from the great 14th century welsh poet, Dafydd ap Gwilym (c. 1315/1320 – c. 1350/1370)
Read more from The Poetry of Wales
THE BARD’S LONG-TRIED AFFECTION FOR MORFYDD
All my lifetime I have been
Bard to Morfydd, “golden mien!”
I have loved beyond belief,
Many a day to love and grief
For her sake have been a prey,
Who has on the moon’s array!
Pledged my truth from youth will now
To the girl of glossy brow.
Oh, the light her features wear,
Like the tortured torrent’s glare!
Oft by love bewildered quite,
Have my aching feet all night
Stag-like tracked the forest shade
For the foam-complexioned maid,
Whom with passion firm and gay
I adored ’mid leaves of May!
’Mid a thousand I could tell
One elastic footstep well!
I could speak to one sweet maid—
(Graceful figure!)—by her shade.
I could recognize till death,
One sweet maiden by her breath!
From the nightingale could learn
Where she tarries to discern;
There his noblest music swells
Through the portals of the dells!
When I am from her away,
I have neither laugh nor lay!
Neither soul nor sense is left,
I am half of mind bereft;
When she comes, with grief I part,
And am altogether heart!
Songs inspired, like flowing wine,
Rush into this mind of mine;
Sense enough again comes back
To direct me in my track!
Not one hour shall I be gay,
Whilst my Morfydd is away!
THE HOLLY GROVE
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 Hafren’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!
DAFYDD AP GWILYM’S INVOCATION TO THE SUMMER TO VISIT GLAMORGANSHIRE,
Where he spent many happy years at the hospitable mansion of Ivor
Hael. The bard, speaking from the land of Wild Gwynedd, or North
Wales, thus invokes the summer to visit the sweet pastoral county of
Glamorgan with all its blessings:
“And wilt thou, at the bard’s desire,
Thus in thy godlike robes of fire,
His envoy deign to be?
Hence from Wild Gwynedd’s mountain land,
To fair Morganwg Druid strand,
Sweet margin of the sea.
p. 56Oh!
may for me thy burning feet
With peace, and wealth, and glory greet,
My own dear southern home;
Land of the baron’s, halls of snow!
Land of the harp! the vineyards glow,
Green bulwark of the foam.
She is the refuge of distress;
Her never-failing stores
Have cheer’d the famish’d wilderness,
Have gladden’d distant shores.
Oh! leave no little plot of sod
’Mid all her clust’ring vales
untrod;
But all thy varying gifts unfold
In one mad embassy of gold:
O’er all the land of beauty fling
Bright records of thy elfin wing.”
From this scene of ecstacy, he makes a beautiful transition to the
memory of Ivor, his early benefactor: still addressing the summer, he
says,
“Then will I, too, thy steps pursuing,
From wood and cave,
And flowers the mountain-mists are dewing,
The loveliest save;
From all thy wild rejoicings borrow
One utterance from a heart of sorrow;
The beauties of thy court shall grace
My own lost Ivor’s dwelling-place.”