The visions of England :: :: University of Virginia Library

The war in which Llywelyn fell was the inevitable result of the growing power of England under Edward I; and, considering the vast preponderance of weight against the Welsh Prince, it could not have ended but in the conquest of Wales. Yet its issue, as told here, was determined as if by chance.

by the stream in his agony lies,
And the life of a land ebbs away as he dies.

Carádoc, thy sceptre for centuries kept,
Shall it pass like the ripple, unhonour'd, unwept:
Unknowing the lance, and the victim unknown,
Far from Aberffraw's

in Anglesea: the residence of the royal line of Gwynedd from the time of Rhodri Mawr onwards.

halls and Erýri

the Eagle's rock is a name for Snowdon. The bird has been seen in the neighbourhood within late years.

the lone!

O dark day of winter and Cambria's shame,
To the treason of Builth when from Gwynedd he came,
And Walwyn and Frankton and Mortimer fell
Closed round unawares by the ford in the dell!

—As who, where the shadow beneath him is thrown,
By some well in Saharan high noontide alone
Sits under the palm-tree, nor hears the low breath
Of the russet-maned foe panting hot for his death;

So Llywelyn,—unarm'd, unaware:—Is it she

Eleanor, daughter to Simon de Montfort. After some years of betrothal and impediment arising from the jealousy of Edward I, she and Llywelyn were married in 1278. But after only two years of happiness, Eleanor died, leaving one child, Catharine or Gwenllian.

,
Bright star of his morning, when Gwynedd was free,
Fair bride, the long sought, taken early, goes by?
In the heart of the breeze the lost Eleanor's sigh?

Or the one little daughter's sweet face with a gleam
Of glamour looks out, as the dream in a dream?
Or for childhood's first sunshine and calm does he yearn,
As the days of Maesmynan

by Caerwys in Flintshire; where Llywelyn lived retiredly in youth.

in memory return?

Or,—dear to the heart's-blood as first-love or wife,—
The mountains whose freedom was one with his life,
Gray farms and green vales of that ancient domain,
The thousand-years' kingdom

The descent of the royal house of North Wales is legendarily traced from Caradoc-Caractacus. But the accepted genealogy of the Princes of Gwynedd begins with Cunedda Wledig (Paramount) cir. 400: ending in 1282 with Llywelyn son of Gruffydd.

, he dreams of again?

Or is it the rage of stark Edward; the base
Unkingly revenge on a kinglier race;
The wrong idly wrought on the patriot dead;
The dark castle of doom; the scorn-diadem'd head

On finding whom he had slain, Frankton carried Llywelyn's head to Edward at Rhuddlan, who, with a barbarity unworthy of himself, set it over the Tower of London, wreathed in mockery of a prediction (ascribed to Merlin) upon the coronation of a Welsh Prince in London.

—Lo, where Rhodri and Owain

Rhodri Mawr, (843), who united under his supremacy the other Welsh principalities, Powys and Dinefawr; Owain Gwynedd, (1137),—are among the most conspicuous of Llywelyn's royal predecessors.

await thee!—The foe
Slips nearing in silence: one flash—and one blow!
And the ripple that passes wafts down to the Wye
The last prayer of Llywelyn, the nation's last sigh.

But Llanynys yet sees the white rivulet gleam,
And the leaf of December fall sere on the stream;
While Irfon his dirge whispers on through the combe,
And the purple-topt hills gather round in their gloom.