Translations into English Verse from the Poems of Davyth ap Gwilym/To the Stars
TO THE STARS.
In one of his excursions to meet his lady love at Llanddwyn, in Anglesea (Mon), the poet was benighted and entangled in a thicket; when suddenly the stars burst forth with great splendour, and guided him safely home. In this poem he expresses his gratitude by extolling the beauty of the friendly luminaries.
Oh, I must have the wheels of May,
To guide me safely on my way,
Before I dare again to climb
The mountain precipice sublime—
Or rove amid the mountain rocks—
Or seek to quaff on yonder hill,
The mead, with her of glossy locks;
Oh, love to danger leads us still!
Last night, by reckless love betrayed,
I wandered through the midnight shade,
O’er long-ridged hills with many a moor,
And tangled thicket studded o’er;
And oft with stumbling feet I fell
O’er many a castle’s ruins bare:
At last I reached the city, where
The airy elves of darkness dwell!
A vast green town, whose mansions drear
High o’er the mountain’s summit peer:
Chilled with an agony of fear,
In vain I strove with sudden bound
To fly the wild and haunted ground.
Yon promontory’s dusky height,
Enveloped all around in night,
Like luckless warrior whom his foes
Fiercely in hollow glen enclose,
I crossed myself and gave a cry
Of terror and of agony;
And then recalled to mind the rhyme
Of the great bard[1] of olden time,
Who all in white and gold arrayed,
Into the stony cauldron went:
Like him by “lack of lore” betrayed,
Was I within yon thicket pent!
My way to Llanddwyn I had ta’en,
To find a cure for all my pain.
But he on whom our faith depends,
The Virgin’s Son, who watches ever,
And ever glories to deliver,
The bard in his despair befriends.
“Twelve signs[2]” of hope, at his command,
With showers of splendour light the land;
Brightly arose upon my sight
The stars—those jewels of the night;
Majestic splendours—sparks of seven[3]
Fires that illume the saints in heav’n;
Fruits of the dim moon’s glimm’rings cold,
Fair diadem, around her roll’d!
Omens of seasons glad and fair,
Bright signals in the heav’n displayed,
Scattered like hail-stones every where,
Like hail-stones of the sun-beams made!
Those golden treasures of the sky,
Grand coinage of the Deity;
Those chess-men clearly marked on high,
On the broad chess-board of the sky.
Tiara of heav’n’s summit blue,
Far wandering pavilions—you
Till yester eve I never knew!
Praise to the gorgeous splendours! praise
To the red flow’rs that deck heav’n’s ways!
Praise to the splendour that they gave,
(Those golden works!) the bard to save.
Those holy tapers pure and bright,
Conspicuous raised on yonder height,
The heav’ns—God’s noblest work—to light!
Beads for repentant sinner’s hand,
Brightly suspended—without band!
O’er ev’ning’s broad grey sky they blaze,
Like Camlan’s[4] hosts in ancient days!
Studs in the welkin’s pillars driv’n—
Seeds that have floated up to heav’n.
In vain the blast of night aspires
To quench those bright aërial fires;
In vain their citadels to climb,
In all its wanderings sublime!
They freed my vision from its spell,
And led my steps o’er hill and dell,
Far from that sprite-frequented fell;
And pointed out the road to Mon,
The way my love-sick heart had flown.
(Alas, this wayward heart of mine!)
But not till morning did I gain,
By a long sleepless night of pain,
The palace of the maid divine.
Ah, maiden, miracle of Mon!
Again at midnight will I never
Thus rove for thee—thus strive to shiver[5]
With axe of wood a rock of stone.
- ↑ The allusion contained in these lines is extremely poetical, Taliesin, the Orpheus of Welsh poetry, is said to have been confined in a cauldron of stone, and to have been thus initiated in the mystical lore of Druidism.
- ↑ An allusion to the twelve signs of the zodiac.
- ↑ Charles’s Wain.
- ↑ Camlan is a river which divides Devonshire from Cornwall; on its banks was fought a battle, often alluded to by the Welsh bards, between King Arthur and his rebellious nephew, Meddrawd, in which both these princes were slain.
- ↑ A kind of proverb implying a hopeless or unprofitable enterprise.