Translations into English Verse from the Poems of Davyth ap Gwilym/The Bard and the Grey Brother
THE BARD AND THE GREY BROTHER.
Oh, could I tell the beauteous maid,
Whose palace is in yonder shade;
How fierce to-day my converse ran
With the “mouse-colour’d” holy man!
To the grey monk to-day I went,
Upon a frank confession bent;
I told him freely all: That I
Am a fantastic reckless bard,
And that a maid with coal-black eye
Possesses all my soul’s regard;
And that my love is all in vain!
And that my idol with disdain
My firm affection still repays,
And ceaseless sighs and glorious lays
That spread through Cambria’s land her praise!
The monk advises him to give up the maid of the “hue of the foam,” and to turn to more solemn thoughts. The poet, in reply, is very abusive; he says that, notwithstanding what priests may read from “old parchment,” he does not believe there is any sin in loving woman. “Three things,” he adds, “are loved throughout the world—woman, fair weather, and health.”
And “woman is the fairest flower even in heaven.”
He thus continues:—
From heaven all joy and gladness flow;
All sadness from the depths below:
My song the sorrows can assuage
Of health and sickness, youth and age;
And natural is poesy
To me, as preaching is to thee.
And justly hospitality
Is prized by me, as alms by thee.
There is, sir priest, a proper time
Alike for sermons and for rhyme;
Verse was intended to delight,
Amid the banquet, ladies bright;
In church the Pater Nosters rise
To raise the soul to paradise.
Well did the brave Ystudfach say,
Regaling with the bardic throng,
That “plenty lives with spirits gay,”
But evil dwells with faces long!
He adds that every body can say his prayers, but very few can sing sweet stanzas! This singular poem concludes with a series of maledictions, which the monk and his penitent lavish on each other; and to which a translator cannot hope to do justice.