Translations into English Verse from the Poems of Davyth ap Gwilym/To Morvyth (1)

by Dafydd ap Gwilym

TO MORVYTH.

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The bard supposes himself to have died of love, and describes his funeral.

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Maid with the glowing form, and lily brow
Beneath a woof of golden tresses! now
(As oft before, through years of grief and shame,
And love intense as hopeless)—I exclaim
“Sancta Maria! canst thou not redress
The torments wrought by tyrant loveliness;
To thee I’ve paid the honours of a bride^[1],
But thy stern kinsmen’s unrelenting pride
To me the nuptial presents has denied!

Thou gem of maids—inexorable fair,
By all the sacred relics I protest^[2]
That when I die, the victim of despair,
On thee the guilt of poet’s death will rest!
To-morrow shall I in my grave be laid,
Amid the leaves and floating forest shade,
In yon ash grove—my verdant birchen trees
Shall be the mourners of my obsequies!
My spotless shroud shall be of summer flowers,
My coffin hewn from out the woodland bowers;
The flowers of wood and wild shall be my pall,
My bier eight forest branches green and tall;
And thou shalt see the white gulls of the main
In thousands gather there to bear my train;
And e’en the very woodlands will be seen
To move and join the sad funereal scene!
The thicket of the rocks my church shall be,
Two nightingales, (enchantress, chos’n by thee,)
The sacred idols of the sanctuary!
Its altars raised of brick, its verdant floor
With nature’s varied pavement chequered o’er.
Ne’er do its portals jar with angry cries,
Its leafy depths have baffled Eithig’s eyes.
Skill’d are its holy monks of orders grey,
In Latin lore and in poetic lay;
In all the metres ever writ or read,
In the green volumes through the forests spread!
There, tones of organ loud and tiny bell,
By woodland minstrels waken’d, frequent swell;

There, where the birchen boughs of Gwyneth wave,
Proud maid! to-morrow shall I find a grave!
There, organ like, the nightingale shall roll
His notes, in solemn masses for my soul;
Orisons and “Pater Nosters” shall be said
The summer through, in honour of the dead;
Until the spirit of the bard shall rise,
Freed from its sins, aloft to Paradise!

1. ‘To thee I’ve paid the honours of a bride,
   But thy stern kinsmen’s unrelenting pride
   To me the nuptial presents has denied!’

   It is an old Welsh custom for each of the wedding guests to make a present to the newly-married couple. The clandestine manner in which the bard was married to Morvyth necessarily deprived him of the benefit of this usage, and as the relatives of his bride refused to give their sanction to the marriage, he had no opportunity of obtaining the usual gifts by a subsequent and more regular celebration of the ceremony. Hence his expression, that the kinsmen of Morvyth
   

   ‘To me the nuptial presents have denied,’

   is a poetical mode of intimating that they had refused to sanction his nuptials with Morvyth.
2. He alludes to the Roman Catholic custom of swearing upon the relics of the saints; the most solemn form of oath in ancient times.