Glcan-Alarch: His Silence and Song :: :: University of Virginia Library

Glcan-Alarch: His Silence and Song

By Emily Pfeiffer

Pfeiffer, Emily (1827-1890)

[epigraph]

[dedication]

[section]

GLAN-ALARCH HIS SILENCE AND SONG

BOOK I.

II.

BOOK II.

III.

III

Collapse All | Expand All expand section

GLAN-ALARCH HIS SILENCE AND SONG

BOOK I.

I am the bard Glân-Alarch, he who sings
Beneath the morning cloud which wraps Crag-Eyrie,
Who basks upon his sun-kiss'd side at noon,
And sleeps with him in silence when his crown—
A beacon fire whose message hath been sped—
Fades on the east where he prolonged the day.
I am Glân-Alarch, he whose day of life
Is likewise hasting to its close, who holds
His course, a waning, lonely light, ere long
To drop as drops the sun,—but in a sea,
If not more silent, one whose murmurous music,
Hath never found a voice in tongue of man,—
And leave his fame to live a twilight hour
Glowing upon the heights he loved to range.

An ancient bard! an eagle who no more
May front the eye of day on outspread wing,
And see the earth's rim rise, while his lone eyrie

Fades in the deepening blue beneath his feet.
An ancient bard! A garden all deflowered,
A wintry tree, whose summer crown of leaves
Is laid in golden fragments at his root;
An ancient bard!—a singer—if a seer,
One whom the vision overtakes like sleep,—
Whose harp a passing sigh can wake to music,
Or but the idle fingers of the wind.
An ancient bard,—my children, have you thought
What that may mean? A poet with the snows
Of time upon his beard and burning lips;
A nightingale whose song is for the rose,
Belated where his rose has ceased to bloom;
A child who in a cave which darkens daylight
And deadens music, wears away his heart,
And struggles to repress the life that throbs
Too rudely for his mouldering house of clay.

But not in sadness will I quench my song;
For joy still lives, if not for old Glân-Alarch,
And pride of strength; what though its fountains rise
From other springs than his,—its droppings reach
Him in his drouth; and there is light in heaven

For him and every poorest thing that breathes;
And bardic fire for me, which, when it burns,
Mine ancient house still glows with deathless youth!

I would it burned more fully; that its flame
Were high, and worthy of its source divine;
Then would I sing of Eurien, then would make
His gracious strength, his valour, and his skill,
His royal rage in combat,—seen alas!
Too often on our fields of civil strife,—
His daily victories with hawk and hound,
His daily largess at the castle gate,
His princely gifts of bracelet and of torque,
The smile which doubles all he gives, and makes
The proud his cheerful debtors;—these, and all
The graces of his mien,—his blue-veined brow,
His wealth of sun-bright hair and amber beard,
His lordly glance, curled lip, and many more
The proud adornings of his golden youth—
These would I make to cling about the name
I love, till Time, himself grown old, should look
Back on young Eurien, and long for light
Like that which glowed upon our ripening world.

The valleys in a circle which an eagle
Upon the quest might gather in his glance,
Are Eurien's; all their short sweet herbage cropped
By Eurien's flocks; the mountain's wooded flanks
And savage moorlands are his hunting grounds;
The hamlets, and the scattered townships, sown
On lake and stream, are peopled with his lieges,
Or those who look for judgment at his hand.
Crag-Eyrie, and the peaks which stand at guard
Around, are Eurien's citadels, and help
His strong right hand to hold his subject realm,
And keep at bay the lawless ones without.
Young Chief of all the region heaving round
Crag-Eyrie, lord of lands and lives of men,
Lord of his wild rock castle, and himself,
He gave me shelter when the fierce red wave
Of war had wasted all that once I owned,
A home, and four brave sons who bore it up.

A youth, he held me out a filial hand
And raised me from the dust where I had died;
He smiled upon me, and I thought at whiles
My youngest born looked comfort through his eyes.

He brought me here; he set his roof above
My faint, bleached head, and bound my falling hairs
With golden wreaths of honours; by his hearth
My place was warm, and when he called a council,
My chair was set at Eurien's right hand.

What could I do for Eurien but live—
Cede him the worthless life that he had saved?
Stand for him yet awhile on the bleak rise,—
The 'vantage-ground of sorrowful old age,—
And shout him warnings from the troublous past;
Or turn when he is sad, and with a hope
More young than his—the Child's, the poet's hope,—
Lift up his heart again, and lead him on
To greatly win,—perchance more greatly lose.

When I should else bewail me that I know
No longer that high strain of fierce endeavour
Which swells the heart of manhood in its prime:
The hand to hand encounter with the foe,
The strong-armed contest with the briny wave,
The duel with some monster of the chase—
Danger and glory in all forms which give

The throb of scores of days of life in one—
Making a cycle of a span of time,—
Then with a sigh I shake my spirit free
And stand at guard, or charge with Eurien,
Or plunge and spurn with him the caverned wave,
Or face with him the fierce, death-breathing bear,
And know a joy of triumph in his 'vantage
Which overflows my lips while his are silent.

But when mine ancient harp of life is swept
To subtler issues, when there comes a breath
Blowing I know not whence, that even now,
Slow-footed, dim of sight, I sigh again
To drink sweet poison, and to die from out
The world of shock and contest, and arise
To taste the double life of angels, then
I let my fancy free to soar with Mona;
And from her eyes, and hovering wild bird motions,
Whose centre is in Eurien, I still catch
The self-less ecstacy she knows as love.

She came to us across the Irish sea,
Beyond the rampart mountains, where we trace them,
Faint films upon the mellow evening sky.

The daughter of an Eric chief, whose blood

It was a point of honour with the Celtic peoples to meet an enemy approaching by sea in the water where the ninth wave broke.

Reddened the ruin of the ninth sea wave
As it slid over to its fall, and washed
The coming feet of Cadwan, who had gone
With his bold bands to aid a desperate cause
Against marauding Vikings. She, a child,
Houseless and friendless by this chance of war,
Was snatched by Cadwan as we snatch a dog
Forsaken, or a lamb left motherless
Upon the hills, and carried o'er the seas
To Mona. There she dwelt—a cumbrous toy
To rough but not unkindly nurses; thence
She brought the name she bears among us still.

A day had dawned on Eurien's mother Modwyth
When earth and sky were dark; slow death had torn
A daughter from her widowed hold,—a maiden
As fair as Eurien's younger self, when seen—
As once upon a summer noon we saw him—
Doubled in Quellen Lake. For this bright vision
The tear-dimmed eyes of Modwyth were a-weary
When first they lit on Mona, sent by Cadwan,
Her kinsman, in the hope to ease her pain.

A scared, white, bloodless elf had Mona seemed
In these first days; alack, the child had seen,
Heard, felt, and all but tasted gory death;
What marvel if the beatings manifold
Of the young heart, had robbed the starveling veins?

Our lady Modwyth took the maid, and sought,
To tame and teach her household works and ways;
Took her to home and heart; nay, scarce to heart,
She did not love at first those pleading eyes
Startled and strange, that lit the wan, peaked face
Beneath the pent-house brow, and dusky shade
Of wilful hair, and gazed at her where late
Her buried darling, Eurien's sister, lay
A fading glory all of gold and pearl.
Still she was pitiful, and gave the child
The best of all she had that was not love,—
Shelter, and cheer, and council; that ere long
Those seeking eyes grew deep and still with trust.

But when they turned on Eurien as he came,
A royal stripling, from some mountain course,
Fresh from the day-light and the salt sea breath,

Tossing aside his golden-threaded hair,
Stretching his limbs in calm, luxurious rest,
Reaching one patron hand to stroke her head,
The other to the hound which from her side
Uprose to lay her litter at his feet,—
Then Mona's eyes grew deeper yet, and blue,
Bluer than blue Glas-lynn when bluest air
Veils it from him who gazes from Crib-Coch,
And still and patient as some watchful star
Which lights us from the furthest depths of space.

There fell a day which stands a day apart,
Unlike the common throng of those which make,
Not mark, the life of age; a day of doom
To one, of grief to all of Eurien's house;
A day of days, which, spite its rueful end,
Hath left its blazon fair no less than foul.

Swift messengers from Eurien had gone forth
On foot and horse, at earliest dawn, to call
A council which should meet in hall at noon,
To give award of judgment, and of aid,
For Eurien's vengeance on an ancient foe.

Some men, the elders, or the graver spirits
Of those who owed him service, Eurien thought
To summon in his radiant person, charge
With his free tongue; so bid me to his side
To bear him company upon the way.

Our chief was wroth; his forehead cleft with lines
Which made his sombre brows to meet as one,
And caused his visage, else so frank and fair,
To bear the threatening semblance of a cross.

We walked in silence, drawing deeper breath
Of purer air, and shaking from our feet
The dust of lower earth at every step.
We clomb in silence; over land and sea
O'er mountain peak and jagged side, there hung
A luminous mist, and from the valleys seethed
A meeting stream of vapour, boiling up
And breaking into flakes about our feet.
We rose in silence; so we gained the ridge
Swept by the icy breath of Moel-Wythfa,
Whereon those vapoury billows, lashed and torn,—
Precipitated by the driving winds—

We seemed to hold our course amidst dumb breakers,
In silence, on a silent, hungry sea.
I think that Eurien's eyes of welkin blue
Saw little of that wild, phantasmal scene,
The dread abysses which perplexed the sense,
When suddenly the wind-pierced mist was rent,
And mountain streams that bubbled in the coombs
Far down below, laughed brightly in our beards;
Or rocks surged up, and chasms yawned, where late
That sea had foamed at us in voiceless rage.
He seemed to feel that tight-clenched hand of his,—
Tenacious in its grip as some fair shell,—
Close on his foeman's throat, and his firm foot
Fall heavy as the huge black Arthu's stone,
Crushing the stubborn neck of Cynorac's pride.

The ridge that had been was a ridge no more;
The misty ocean, open to the right,
Was closed upon the left by shelving rocks
Which cast their purple shadows on its face.
We trod the wild rock path in silence still,
The sun above us, we above the steam
Which filled the gaping cauldrons of the coombs;

He listening to his wrath, I to the lark
That tried to sing the fog from out his throat.
And as I listened thus, I heard a song
Which mocked me with an echo, here, and there,
Sounding now near, now far, but growing still,
Larger upon the lightening mountain air:
A hymn in which the lark's clear-gushing joy
Was married to a mood which had been born
Of shadow-haunted mountain tarns, and rocks
Which glacier drifts had furrowed, and of peaks
Which point from age to age their cones to heaven,
And topple down from age to age to earth.

And hearing of the song, I saw a shade
That glided towards us on the rolling mist;
A vast and regal shade as of a queen
Sceptered and crowned,—and thought that clarion hymn
Whose joyance all too keen, broke like a wail,
Became this gliding phantom of our hills.

But lo! the rocky wall broke off and ceased,
And swinging round the path, firm on the blue,
Vague, shifting dream-land of the far-off fields,

There met us face to face, no mountain queen
Of mould majestic, but a lithe, spare sprite,
Our maiden Mona, singing as she came,
And looking up above our heads, with eyes
Whose gaze appeared as though it came from far,
And pierced yet farther through the widening blue.

The crown upon her head was of the white
And purple mountain heather, and her wand
An ashen branch, with berries at its point;
Her blood-hound, Myneth, joyful at the touch
Of Mona's hand, pressed closely to her side,
Betwixt the yawning gulf and those light feet
Whose heedless steps he guarded; at our view,
A starling from her shoulder taking flight
Brought down the maiden's eyes to where we stood.

She ceased her song; that too had dropped to earth
Swifter than swiftest downfall of the lark;
Pressed back her hair, and with a furtive hand
Stole from her head its blossomy crown, and seemed
With drooping eyes, bent brow, and lowered wand,
To lay it with her song at Eurien's feet.

Her cheek which when we met her, had been—no,
Not pale, but shining white as was the mist,—
Was glowing when she lifted up the veil,
Dropped on the first shy gladness of her eyes,
And fixed them—twin blue stars with sombre rays—
On Eurien's, which had gathered in one glance
Her lowered wand and flowery crown, now buried
Deep in the drapings of her skirt, and marked
The hound which owning him as lord, returned
To crouch and fawn at Mona's unshod feet.

Was it some glamour of the misty morn,
Or was the maid, who at unwelcome tasks
Harried and chidden at the ingle side,
Seemed faint and dull of hue, a goddess here,—
Worshipped and known to be the soul, the voice,
Of that deep-breathing Nature which she loved?

Mine ancient eyes in sooth proclaimed her such;
But Eurien viewed her in his lusty prime,
And saw but little Mona, broken loose,
Made fresh and sweet with morning air and dew,

And rosy haply with becoming shame,
At morning hours so heedlessly enjoyed.

And still his eyes that met her mute appeal,—
Bold eyes that were not daunted by the sun
That smote upon his brow and golden curls,—
Grew liquid in the ripple of a smile.
He said: ‘Our mother Modwyth wakes and works
Already, and if she had hands as many
As bristle round the idols of the Ind,
She'd find some service for each hand this day.’

Then Mona answered rather with her fleet
And forward motion, than her eager words:
‘I go to help her, Eurien; God speed
To thee and me!’ So vanished down the slope.

We paused upon the shoulder which uplifts
The crown of Moel-Wythfa, and drew in
The unobstructed air with open lips,
And through our eyes the magic draught of beauty.
The breeze had swept the way which we had come
Clean of the mist, and down beneath our feet

The morning faces of the lakes were trembling
As new chain-mail that glisters in the sun,
And proudly overlooking Llyn-y-Gader,
Uprose our ancient towers of Garth-y-Gwin;
And, set there as a door betwixt the mountains
That opened on the far-off, shining sea,
The halls of Carreg-Havod crowned a bryn
Where cloven rocks that pierced the fine green sward,
Rose bristling like a dragon's deadly spines.

My eyes were lingering over vales and summits,
My thoughts were wandering wildly through the world,
And then they set to Eurien; when I turned,
His gaze was fixed, and in his eyes there came
A light—not such as when the sun breaks through
To kiss a shadowed pool, but such as brightens
Its surface when it curdles in the breeze.

I followed Eurien's glances to their mark,
And winding slowly down the treacherous sides
Of Carreg-Havod, like some insect train,—
The blight upon the green sheath of a bud—
Beheld a Company,—a mounted dame,

Set in the midst of her attendant thralls,
Her face towards Garth; and with the dame, a boy,
Who, tricksy as an elf, pushed in and out
Amongst the mountain ponies, cautious brutes,
That felt their way adown the rugged steep.

We took no note, but turned upon our course
Over the mountain's shoulder, with its crown—
White Moel-Wythfa—at our backs, still rising,
Rising and shutting out that face of life.

Grave Moel-Hebog,—wherefore lift to-day
The brow that hath so long been swathed in clouds,
Unveiled above the beech woods? Mona's gaze
Is not for thee, although she knows full well
How thou and Moel-Wythfa, like two mourners
Duly related as to some dead joy
Drop mourning weeds together; still she turns not
Nor thinks upon that nearest step to heaven
Where callow eagles whom the sun makes glad
And bold, are learning even now to mount
In dizzy spirals towards the light. In vain
The magic curtain of the mist unveils

The golden shore and silver kissing waves;
Or the grey buzzard circles round her head,
So nigh it shakes the air which fans her cheek;
She knows the cradle of its downy young
Beneath the moorland grasses, and the reeds,
Where trembling windlets that have lost their way,
Trouble the air with their complaining minor.
In vain bright eyes illume the shadowy fern,
Or glance before her feet in playful challenge;
Or laden bees rise up from gorse and heather
To tempt her to their distant arsenals;
In vain they all, her freakish playmates, strive
To win her steps aside; no life that stirs
Can reach her dazzled sense through that bright image
She bears away this day from Moel-Wythfa:
The image of her Eurien, her lord
That should be, and her ruler now, nay more,
Her sun-god since he lights for her the world.

Then Mona tossing to the boy, who blew
The horn which told of coming guests, her crown
And sceptre, with a smile which made him glad,
Entered the dark portcullis, and with feet

Whose buoyant tread had left them all unharmed
By jagged rocks upon the mountain side,
Pressed down the new-strewn rushes of the hall.
Modwyth was there, one tall still shape among
The moving many who obeyed her word;
Who clomb the walls to rid the arch or cusp
Of faded relics of the harvest feast;
Who bore away the full-topped oaken branch
To clear a place for fire upon the hearth;
Who fanned the dust, now from the fine chain mail,
Now from huge horns and antlers,—savage arms
Of savage beasts; who furbished up a helm,
A lance or shield; or thrust a helot hand
Within a knightly gauntlet, which the rust
Had bitten in too deeply; who shook out
A plume, or draped a banner's folds afresh,
And made all seemly for the coming day.

And Mona, bending for her blessing, felt
One hand of Modwyth light upon her head,
The while its fellow reached to where a star
Of arrows shone above the door, and showed
How one of them had swerved; then felt again

Two bird-like taps upon her wind-blown hair,
And heard the broken formula re-spoken;—
Which done, twice bless'd, she rose not blest at all.

But waiting with her eyes on Modwyth's glance,
Eager to speed its bidding, Mona stood
Or hovered with uncertain step or touch
About a doubtful task, which half-way done
She left at call of Modwyth;—baffled, ‘lifted’
From place to place, as 'twere a hound at fault.

Ere long the horn was wound upon the turret,
Steeds ground the courtyard stones, and stranger voices,
One high with eagerness, one shrill with youth,
Contended at the door, which opening wide
Let in upon them Bronwen and her boy,
To flood the hall with chatter, and arrest
Its silent service. Bronwen had a store
Of griefs and wrongs which loosely in a sheaf
Unwinnowed, she in Eurien's absence, laid
Before his mother. Of her many griefs
Most were loud-tongued, one dumb. The dumb one bore
The venomed sting which cankered Bronwen's peace.

A weary woman was the fair Bronwén:
Widowed well-nigh a year beset with fears;
A lordly castle at her back, a mark
And prize for ravin; with one little son,
Too young to do her service, and one foe—
The common foe of all the country round,
Whom—tell it not aloud, this is the grief
That stings and has no voice—whom Bronwen once
Had sought to make her friend, her freer, her champion—
The master of her fate,—and he would not.
And ravage had been busy nights agone
On Bronwen's folds, whereof she asked no question,
But set it to the unpaid debt of Cynorac,
And came with it to Garth and golden Eurien,
To stir him with her tale and with her tears,
And beauty softened in the light of his.

Then Mona under cover of this cloud,
Ventures short flights alone,—a furtive bird
Flitting from twig to twig;—retires behind
The settle, squares the cushions in the place
Where Modwyth sits; ranges her spinning wheel

Right to her hand; and ready to her feet
The stool about whose carven base is turned
The flower-de-luce; then draws the curtain round
To shield her from the keen-edged winds that blow
Through loop and lancet; when the whole is done
In Modwyth's nook beside the hearth, she turns
To Eurien's chair that heads the council board,
Unveils its broidered glories, and before it
Places the footstool with the dragon wrought
In threads of gold and grain: ‘Like this.’ she said,
Be all base counsel ground beneath his foot!’

And near at hand while, silent as the light,
Mona had worked, two mocking eyes had marked
Her motions; one young lip had curled with scorn
Old as the dark old world, at what it held
The maiden's simple folly; and a laugh—
Born before gladness, or surviving it,—
Came chuckling from between the pale puffed cheeks
Of Poplet, as he pointed to the stools:
‘See Mona, mother,—in her dreams she sets
The broidered stool for him, the carved for her!’
And Mona feeling ill at ease before

Those eyes like plums that had foregone their bloom,
Slipt from the hall, to steal within again,
Unnoted haply at a distant door,
Bearing a posy of such loitering blooms
As stay behind the summer: flaming disks
Of sunflowers, and dim daisies, scantly prized
For all the pride that lifts their heads on high,
With golden-rod, and meadow-sweet, and ranged
All fairly in a jar, which then she set
To catch the sunbeam on the window-sill.

And little Poplet, laughing all the while,
Clutching his mother's skirts, brought down her eyes
To where the maiden, sad-faced Mona, stood,
Winning the blossoms gently to her will.

But while he laughed, and pointed his small wit,
Fair Bronwen smiled, and inly ripened hers.

And Mona all unwitting now of eyes
Brightening or darkling on her, moved to seek
The dried sweet herbs, the marjoram, the rue,
The thyme and lavender, that hung on high
Hidden within a cranny of the hearth,

And threw a handful on the crackling logs
Which filled with grateful incense all the hall.
At which the imp laughed louder than before,
Mopping at her, and capering in the smoke
As he had been a witch's changeling, crying:
‘She burns the herbs wherewith we savour broth!’
Then seeing Modwyth and his mother near,
With all the servile throng,—their labours done,—
Waiting a word to free them, Poplet ceased
His dance, and came with side-long twinkling glance
To Mona, when he wagged his head, and cried—
Thinking to match their wits to Mona's shame:
‘I pray you tell us what were now the worth
Of a stout ploughman, with a maimed right hand.’
And Mona turned on him her eyes, whose light
And size were doubled by her gathering tears,
And answered: ‘As I think, there be no scales
Wherewith to weigh the merit of a man;
But there are lords would let a heavier heart
Count for the churl against a missing limb.’

Then straightway to her own there swept a wave,
A viewless, silent wave,—as from the souls

Uprisen from the trammelled flesh of those
Who waited Modwyth's nod, and Mona turning
As drawn towards it, caught upon her face
The gaze of twenty wistful eyes, and lost
The shout which Poplet sent to claim his triumph.

And then upon the floor there fell a tread
In which each ear confessed, in love or awe,
Its lord's approach; and Eurien, the golden,
His royal beauty overlayed with signs
Of regal office, showed himself, and silence
Fell over all as of a summer noon.

And pale behind him followed one who showed,
With ragged silver locks, and silver beard
Spread out upon his robe of bardic blue,
Like an old moon all worn with wandering,
Beside the dazzling effluence of the sun.

And Modwyth drank in light from him, which filled
The hollow of her heart; and Bronwen reared
Her grandly-pillared head at him, and swelled
Her stately form, as might have reared and swelled

Some proudly-crested snake which yet could bend
Its pride before him till it ate the dust.

Which while her son had followed from the hall
The servitors, and Mona by the hearth
Sunk trembling with an all-subduing joy
Which smote through life and limb keen as a pang,
I, old Glân-Alarch, watched her, crouched aloof,
Seeming to pierce the embers' fiery heart,
And, as I am Glân-Alarch, knew that none
Who looked our master in the face, beheld him
With such full breadth of knowledge, as the maid
Who saw him crowned with glory in the flame.

There fell a waiting moment, vague and still,
Whose twilight lines, the after-glow of feeling
Deepened for some of us: fair Bronwen's babble
Wafted to Eurien's sense on fragrant breath,
And Mona's eyes that burned like purple gems
Between two fires, and Mona's shell-like ear
That soothed her as I think with stored-up music,—
Breathings of Eurien's lips on tuneful days,
Garnered to stay her need in barren seasons.

The hour felt heavy-weighted,—loth to pass;
It was the boy winding his horn without
Who summoned us to meet our coming fate,
And welcome to our halls the gathering guests.

Weroc strode in; his sunken, wolfish eyes
Eager for fight; for he had hungry wrongs
A score or twain, ready to take the field
In any cause that served him for the nonce
As cover for the glutting of his ire:
And Peredur and Ruval, maiden knights,
Who clanked their armëd heels upon the floor,
Pounding the lowly rushes that denied
To good war steel its ring; and Cyndelu,
Whose mind, as supple as the reeds, still bent
Before the breath of other men: and Gryffyth,
Fast bound to Eurien by a chain of debt
Which gladly he had broken, but forbore,
Counting to forge new links with newer need.

He stood with cap in hand; while at his side
Was one whose tie to Eurien had grown
Into his flesh; who sometimes faced his frown,

But opened like a blossom to his smile:
Wytham of Borth, whom Eurien's arrow wrested
Once from the poisonous onslaught of a stag,
And who—the willing bondman of his love—
Stood frankly forth, the freest of the free.

And still without the door the iron clank
Of hoofs, and heels alighting, roused the ear;
While creamy draughts of mead and of metheglin
Bubbled and foamed within the tankards, crowned
By Modwyth's hand, and served to each new guest
By Bronwen or by Mona: queenly Bronwen,
Her face composed to sadness as beseemed
Th' occasion and her wrongs; her fair head curbed
A little from her stately throat, most like
A flower too long unwatered, that might seem
To crave the grace of all that hardy manhood
For that it dared to bloom so high. Pale Mona,
A maid of mist and moonshine, as they deemed
Who saw not in the spirit-light which pierced
The fine, too-subtilised flesh, the passionate heat
Of the white soul. As these twain thrid their way
Amongst the shaggy men with keen wild eyes,

And ears grown sharp at lonely bivouac fires,
There went with them a honey-laden breath
Which weighted with its richness all the air.

Our chieftain stood and quaffed his mead in haste,
Or turned and spoke a passing word to any
Who chanced to be his neighbour; or with instance
Pressed flagons of the wine and mead on all;
Yet every act and word of him was shaped
But to command of knightly courtesy,
When, counting heads, he found that all were come.
So then he struck upon the hearts of one
Or two among his guests, a subtle chord,—
For Eurien had lips the Muse had touched—
And moving with the men his voice had swayed,
And Wythan, who was pervious to his thought,
And him whose silver beard was ever set
Beside his golden one, we four assumed
Our stations at the board, and led the rest

Then, ere the Councilmen were fully set,
Modwyth stood forth: a woman whom the years
If they had found more fair, had left more noble.

The mettle of her race so oft had leapt
Unshrinking at the sacrificial call
Of honour, that the brow she now uplifted
Was grandly dinted, as a hero's shield.
Her voice was pitched that all might hear, her eyes
Addressed her son:

‘Thy mother claimeth not,—
Albeit she brought a thanedom to her dower—
A place beside thee at the Council board,
Content to hold her right beside the hearth,
Not heedless of your wisdom as it flows.’

Some bent them to the lady as she stood,
Some turned and faced her son in churlish doubt;
But one young voice,—'twas Wythan's—rang out clear:
‘God save our lady Modwyth!’

Eurien paused
A moment ere he said as overborne:

‘Your place in Garth is where you choose to take it.’

Then Modwyth, faltering somewhat as she caught
The trouble of his eye, looked round the board:

‘My sire and spouse were heroes, and my son—
Mine only son—could be no less; God wot
My pride would have him more, if more might be.
My widowed presence, damping not his fire,
Will haply temper what might burn to waste.’

‘God save our Lady Modwyth!’ cried again
The bold young voice which shamed our silent Council;
And Modwyth turned, and making sign to Bronwen
And Mona to attend her, drew her wheel,
And, throned in humble duty, set her pale,
Proud, stedfast face against the flickering blaze.
So to the high-pitched voices at the board
The wheel made dull companionment, like life
With its half-conscious motions, that confuse
The sense of tragic issues of the will.

Still keenly on her ear, where Eurien sent them,
Not heedless of his aim, his words had struck,
When he recounted how the jealous thanes
Her forbears, guarded as a sacred trust
Each appanage pertaining to the fief—

Bought by the blood of those whose bodies now
Were mingled with the soil they held in fee
For generations of their unborn seed.
And then he showed how Cynorac had reaped
The grain, scarce ripened, from outlying fields,
How felled the trees his father's hands had planted,
How come at night to vex him with unmaking
The work his thralls had toiled at through the day;
And lastly, when reprisals had been taken
By some who had the honour of their lord
More than the safety of their bones at heart,
How he had caught and sent them home, sewn up
In skins of beasts filched living from the flocks.
All this forsooth because a widow held
The lands and kine so plundered, and 'twas thought
A son would tamely take a mother's wrongs!
So would not he, by Heaven, if they, his friends,
Would help him to chastise his foe and theirs;
For Cynorac was like a fox, who spared
No roost, albeit it liked him best to prey
On the defenceless. Widows were his spoil;
Not every widow had a man-grown son;
Some had their hands o'erweighted with the care

Of helpless orphans. One he knew of these:
She sate beside his mother at the hearth
Of which she claimed the shelter. They were men,
And British men, whom long adversity
Had rendered pitiful; there was not one
But felt that he was summoned as by name,—
Father, or brother, husband, as might be,—
To right a woman who, if she should speak
Those words, could speak them only of the dead!

Then none so rude or stern of all that band,
But turned when Eurien ceased, with softened mien
To look upon the gracious woman there,
Bending to dry the cheeks that seemed to freshen
Beneath the mild o'erflowings of her eyes.

Then Weroc blundered in to mar the picture
So lightly touched by Eurien, who, with cunning
Of speech-craft, had of choice prolonged the moments
Whose beats were cyphers added to a sum.

The words of Weroc,—he whom no man loved,—
Were heavy with a hoard of well-worn wrongs,

Which, touching only Weroc, none else cared
To make his own. And so from time to time
The hatchet strokes of Weroc's speech were broken
By shafts from some keen-witted hearer, turning
His weapon on himself; while glistening eyes
Looked on well pleased, or a low laugh broke out
From lips too lightly guarded; till the fire
In Weroc's heart leapt up in evil flame,
And the grave council met to quell disorder
Seemed hurrying on its course to make it more.

And ever as the voices of the men
Grew louder, fiercer, still the wheel of Modwyth
Spun fast and faster, as unwittingly
The heart well learned in sorrow set the damper
Of outward act to dull the chord of pain.

But Mona left the carding of her wool
And listened as with every sense at once,
While Bronwen, tending with a smooth observance
On Modwyth's need, plenished anew the distaff,
And swiftly set it to her trembling hand,

Yet with a glance oblique still filched the news
Which might concern her at the council board.

In vain the voice which Eurien could tune
To any key of music, now was raised
In bland persuasion, now in sharp command;
The angry answers crossed like chopping waves,
And wild misrule appeared the only lord.
So through the tumult none had caught the note,
Though sharp as sea-bird's scream above the storm,
Which sounded from the bugle on the turret,
And knew not till the iron-guarded gate
Groaned on its hinges and let in a gust
Of Autumn wind that carried a red shower
Of withered leaves, which sadly it let fall,
That warning had been sent them from without.
There, dark against the cold and watery light
Silvering the edges of his panoply,
Driven as 'twere before that bodeful shower,
Announced as by the moaning of the wind,
A knight on horseback, pale and sad as death,
And misty as a spectre in the smoke
Wreathing his charger, rode into the hall

And struck his spear with force upon the flags,
As one who fain had propped his ebbing strength
Against the stedfast earth, and rooted there.

And then a cry which was not of the wind,
Long-drawn and freakish, but the sharp outburst
Of a pent human soul, that rushes forth
Incontinent, unwitting, at the touch
Of human brotherhood, came from the man;
And suddenly the petty gusts of passion,
Which eke had blown from every point at once,
Were quelled before that masterful, sole breath;
And hands of fellowship were laid about
His knees, and lowering eyes looked up to catch
An answer to dumb fear, while every heart
Recoiled before the yet unworded sorrow,
Which each man felt instinctively his own.

So words flung forth, and torn with now a sob,
And now a curse, but pieced and held together
With shreds of knowledge common to us all,
Made up at length the story of a wrong
More brutish, nay more devilish, than any

Of that long train by which the Sassenach
Had marred for Cymric hearts the peace of Christ.

Twelve hundred monks of Bangor, men of God,
His ministers that were, His martyrs now,—
Slain at His altar,—slain before His eyes,
Kneeling to ask for judgment of their cause
There where their butchers were as free to kneel,
But that they dared not tempt high God in face.
Twelve hundred martyrs! Men whose holy hands
When not uplift in prayer, were set to feed
The hungry, and to smoothe the brow of pain,—
Slain by the sword, who never took the sword,
Slaughtered like lambs at pasture on the hills!
The brutal Saxon, Ethelfrith, the leader
Of the vile scum which makes our wholesome borders
A foul morass, from out his swinish sleep
Awakened by the voices of these saints
Rising on morning breath with fragrant thyme
And all sweet savours of the dawning day,
Cried out:

‘These monks, they fight us with their prayers,
Which we make bold to answer with our swords!’

I—Bard of Glyneth—charge thee,—God of heaven,
That in Thy sovereign prescience, not alone
Thou shalt fulfil the prayers of saints stopped short
Upon their road to Thee, but that for once
Those eyes which are too pure to look on evil,
Shall gaze unflinching,—so thou shalt not fail
To answer with Thy sword these fiends of hell!

Our ancient Bangor levelled and despoiled,
The records of our learning and our pride,—
The story of the years that are no more,—
Lapsed into sullen silence for all time!
The God-won flame of thought, inherited
And fed by us to light the world to come,
Blown out, with nought but ashes left to darken
The storm, or trodden dust for us to heap—
Heap on the mountain of our huge despair!

We stood and heard the tale, then slowly turned
All white and dumb to face each other's anguish;
And in dead silence of our rigid lips
We sounded the black depths of our revenge.

But winds were blowing, wild and contrary,
In Eurien's soul, which made his bold young glance
To flicker from mine own, grown dull with time,
But all as steadfast as the evening sun,
The red bleared orb which looks from out the mist.

Our chieftain's face was like a dubious morning,
When lion-like he shook his tawny locks,
And stroking with a hand which trembled still
The waves from out his beard, he seemed to fight
As if against the storm which had o'ertaken
The purpose of our souls, and struggle back
To find it in the wreck, and once more draw us
With that abiding power which he owned
Within th' unswerving current of his life.

He spoke, while all around—e'en to the logs,
Which broke into a sudden flame, and ceased—
Was still, as if the hollow hall had grown,
The empty waiting chamber of an ear.

He reached his hand—his wrath still struggling in it,
And took from off the board whereon it lay

Guarding some runic scrolls, a thing which but
The use it owned made other than a toy;—
A fancy wrought in silver,—a white hand

An object similar to that which is here described is now among the British antiquities in the British Museum.

Mocking the one which held it, while in turn
It pressed within its dainty clasp, a ball
Which was not of its metal, but of lead.

‘I take within mine own,’ quoth he, ‘this hand,
And place it, deadly weighted as ye see it,
Beneath my vesture, pressing on my heart;
So by the God who watches over men,—
Though fiends have done what might bespeak them blind,
I swear to nurse my vengeance till the hour
Is ripe to hurl it on the Sassenach;
Meanwhile it will go hard but I shall add
Some scruple to its measure day by day.’

A groan almost, what might have been a cheer
In happier moment, broke from us; then Eurien:

‘Good friends we have a rede to rede, albeit
It comes—God save the mark!—from vain Brocmail,

Who never, as I think, could furnish wisdom
To any, an 'twere not the backward way.
He, fool and victim of his jealous heart,
Athirst to crown himself with unshared honour,
Has dared to face this devil, Ethelfrith,
Unbacked, and with his sorry men of Powis
To brave the high spring tide of Saxon wrath
Bursting at last upon the rampart hills
Whose base it long has howled about in vain.

‘Learn we from his defeat to bide our time!
And when each canker of the heart is purged,
Then fare we forth to quell the rampant foe,—
A healthy body, working to one end,
And knit together in each breathing part
With the strong purpose of a due revenge.
But from this end, which, witness heaven, shall ever
Be counted as the harvest of all hope,
We—never turning—still will swerve awhile
Like crafty fowlers; so good friends at dawn,
To-morrow, we will still fare forth, and try
The temper of our swords on Cynorac.’
A crash as of a fall beside the hearth,—

A spindle haply, or a wheel which rang
Against the flags whereon in blinding impulse
Unheeded, known or seen, it had been cast,
We heard, we saw no more, till at the board,
At Eurien's side, there stood a white-robed shape,
Which silently as drifts the feathery snow,
Had floated to that place,—a nymph-like form
We knew, and did not know.

It was not Mona
Who turned the eyes which had become as wells
Of awful depth—of sorrow too profound,
And rage too patient, for a mortal maid—
Full on our faces; no, not she, our merle,
But dread Cyridwen, genius of our race,
Descended there to front us with our shame.

She stood and spoke no word, though the wan lips
We deemed had overflowed with living thought,
Heaved from a heart we knew was big with it,
Moved as for speech; the heart was all too thronged,
Too full for utterance; so, dumb at the lips,
She lifted from her side her Irish harp,

When from beneath her fingers there broke forth
A wail which matched the message of her eyes.

Alas! it was our merle, our singing-bird!
For though she held us by a sovereign spell,—
A passion so supreme, it overwrought
The rudest spirit in the grossest clay
Of any there who drew the breath of man,
Even to down-faced Weroc,—it was still
Our Mona, charging all the air around
With fine electric thrills, but no immortal;
We learnt that from the beating of her heart.
White as Crag-Eyrie in the breathless night
When the late harvesters are at their work,
And the dusk dome of heaven, whence all the stars
Have fled before the magic of the moon,
Sweeps darkly down as sweeps the smooth-tressed hair
Framing the lurid forehead of a corpse:
Even so white and darkly framed she waited
With patient purpose till her tongue was loosed.

Then Weroc, shamed throughout his churlish nature
That he, for but a moment, had been awed

By the dumb presence of a brainsick girl,
Rose with an oath, and muttered taunt at those
Who struggled still to free themselves, and failed.

But ere he went she turned, and putting forth
Her slender arm,—such potence of command
Had grown in her—she stopped him on his way;
And now the flood-gates of swift speech broke down,
And words welled forth that sounded strangely first,
As shot in sudden jets beside the mark,—
But words which as they flowed, and gathered force,
Caught from her burning heart a bardic fire.

‘They have hunted you to your hills, ye men of Glyneth!
Your rivers and plains are the spoil of the Sassenach;
And they laugh like slaves in the face of him that winneth.’

She paused, like a young bird that tries its wing
For longer flight; then struck her harp and sung.

‘You have fattened for them your fields, ye men of Glyneth,
Your dead have covered the soil as a fruitful flood,

And the rivers that dance in the sun and look not back,
Are fuller for tears, and richer for running blood.

‘They have sent ye to herd with the bear, ye men of Glyneth,
With the wolf and the mountain fox in their rocky holds;
The bog, with the lean wild cat, for your share, men of Glyneth,
For them, your cities, your kine, and your ravished folds!

‘Ye have housed with the beast in his lair, ye Cambrian braves,
Or have hunted him down on the hills in his own wild track;
Inherit his mountains bare and his empty caves;
But his brotherless spirit—let that to the earth go back!

‘If the rush and the lily now flower on tarn and burn
Where he slaked his thirst, and the fight ye have all but won,
It is that his savage heart had not depth to learn
To look for the brother who lives in each mother's son.’

Once more the burthen failed; once more the hand
Took up the strain, and shook from out the harp
Sounds that compelled our spirits more than words.
She struck another key, and then again
Broke forth in language proper to the earth:

‘Dull is the Sassenach, be it as lover or foe,
And ye, my brothers, are quick unto love and ire;
Would ye come to the Sassenach's aid because he is slow?
Would ye lend to his sullen wrath your own wild fire?

‘Ye are weary of laggard love, and of long-drawn strife,
So crown his work and have done,—ye are heroes and free!
But what of the bondman's hope in his trodden life?
And oh, for the eyes of our kindred over the sea!

‘Let the hopes they have garnered be blown to the winds like chaff,
Perish, self-slain, and so fade from the longing eyes!

Die! with the sound in your ears of the Sassenach laugh,
And the requiem, tuneful for ever, of Cymric sighs;

‘Turn the sword each man on his fellow, and make an end;
It is fitting that hero should perish by hero's hand;
So leave ye to Sassenach mercy the lover or friend,
And to slow heart-sickness your brothers on alien strand;

‘Unheeding the lesson of war, and the legend of peace,
And the sacred torch of your lore which from age to age
Has been handed on, let the light of your spirit cease,
As the saint and the soldier have perished, so perish the sage!

‘Forget your olden glory, ye men of Glyneth,
Cast the torch from the armed right hand ere it flickers or fails,
Stamp it out and end the story, O men of Glyneth,

Let Cambria fall like a stronghold that treason assails,
And in tears of your shame shall your land be rechristened wild Wales!’

Wales, Wales, wild Wales! she ended with that cry,
A cry to haunt the memory, and to bring
Tears to the eyes in lieu of sleep at night.
Wales, Wales, wild Wales! Her hearers knew full well
The land she sung of was the bleeding heart
Of Britain, Britain mangled by the foe,
Torn limb from limb, the parts still quick with life,
Throbbing in all sad corners of the earth.

And ending thus she swept from out the hall,
Proud and uplifted as a wave that rears
Its foam-capped crest, and glides before the storm;
But glides before the storm to break at last,
To sink, and to subside in helpless ruin.
As yet she was unbroken, and sped on
With head erect, enlarging as she went,
Till sudden at the door she turned, thrown back

Even as a breaker wrecked upon a bar,
And reaching forth her arms, her eyes abashed—
Their fire all quenched in tears whose light was love—
She lifted trembling hands towards our chief,
And all her woman's soul flowed out before him,
Craving his grace that it could soar so high.

Our chieftain rose, and, breathing a deep breath,
Like a strong swimmer who has stemmed the tide,
Struck himself free from her subsiding passion,
And gave her back her gaze with one that set
The brand of some displeasure on her brow;
As he in taking back a wandering slave
Had marked her that she might not stray again.
Then yielding to the urgence of her eyes,
He signed her pardon with his hand, and said:
‘Beseech you, friends, give quittance for her youth
And scanty knowledge of the ways of men,
Which, with her early baptism of blood,
Hath wrought her fervid soul to such high pitch
As borders on distemper, that at whiles
She oversteps those bounds which God has set,
And men approve becoming in a maid.’

Then Mona, all the forces that had moved her
Lapsed into utter weakness, wavered still
A moment, holding Eurien with her eyes,
Then turning, fled from his averted face,
And heard the clamped and iron-grated door
Swing on its hinges with a groan that stirred
Her heart with pity of herself; and tears
Came thick, as falling prone upon the ground,
Now abject as a wave that licks the shore,
She thought upon the bar which shut her off
From all that love had made her paradise,
And lying on the stony earth she wept:
‘What if his smile should sun me never more?’

She lay awhile and made her moan, then started,
Feeling the grip of little hands, ungentle,
Hot on the fingers which embayed her tears,
And shut from her the darkened world without.

Then Poplet, holding in his rude boy's grasp
The conquered guardians of her eyes, cried mocking:
‘Merle as you are, before I let you fly
You shall confess what folly they have chidden.’

But Mona struggled from his hold, and fled
As she in truth had been that wingëd thing,
And on a path unknown to Poplet, placed
A woody screen betwixt them, and ascended
The mountain high, and higher.

As she went,
Her pulses stirred by valorous defiance
Of frowning dangers of the mountain brow,—
Her heart grew lighter; when she looked below,
Poplet was grown a midge, no more, then vanished
Wholly from sight awhile, to reappear
Upon the turret, snatching from the boy
The horn, whereon he blew a lying signal.
The maiden laughed and said within herself:
‘Praised be the shelter of thy crown, Crag Eyrie!
Thy breath is keen and difficult, but sweet,—
And sweeter that it is not loved of flies!’
Then making straight the course that had been devious,
She clomb to where the sun in his decline
Shone on the rising sea, whose surface crisped
With waves innumerous was as a mirror
Shattered, as if to multiply his beams.

So mounting still she gained the frowning Clogwyn,
And saw the world outspread, with, near at hand,
The cliffs and coombs, far off the rolling surge
Of mountains, fixed as fossil waves, all glowing
In pomp of purple, or of burning gold,
Or melting into vapour on a sky
Swept by the besom of the autumn wind.
And all about her steps the cloven rocks,
And far beneath the lakes, the shining sea;
While as she went the mountains seemed to sway,
To heave and fall as with a solemn rhythm,
And change their places in her upward course.

And Mona, rocked as by the moving world
Of mountains, and the scud of sea and cloud,
Felt as she rose and rose above the vale,
The air weigh lightlier on her brow, the rock,
Springy as air beneath her wingëd feet;
So the strong heart of Nature entered in
The maiden's breast, and set her life in order.

She paused upon the Clogwyn, where the breeze
Lifted the hair from off her brows, dark wings

As of a bird impetuous in its flight;
And then she said,—not wholly to herself,
Nor yet aloud, but as we speak to one
Standing too near our heart to need set forms,—
‘O hills and sea, and shore! familiar features,
Nature, of that dear face which is the all
I know of thee; which would be still thy face,
Thy very face—no meaner part of thee—
Though I should learn to know thee glorious
'Neath torrid skies, or bound in glittering ice.
Some sun-kiss'd lands are fairer it may be;
I know with them the seasons hold a course
More equal, as the actions of the body
Are timelier than the motions of the lips.
Thou art not calm and image-like as they,
Thou ownest not their rule of smiles and tears,—
Broken, where most it binds, with fierce convulsions;
But thou, loved face, art fickle as the wind,
And frownest as thou smilest, changefully,
Weeping, and laughing through thy tears by fits,
With turns of passion, or of sullen woe,
When, with a veil thou blottest out thy beauty
E'en from the eyes whose sight it blesses most.

So art thou richer, fuller in response,
To mortals blown upon by change, like thee.
O tender face and shy, I love thee more
That thou, as I, art sad at whiles, and seekest
To hide thy sorrow; both of us would sing,
Would sing and wake an echo from the stars
If for us both the sun were ever free!’

And then a-weary with her rapid course,
And heavy that her sun was in eclipse,
She sunk upon the ground, and laid her head
As she might lay it on a mother's breast,
Soft on a bank all springy and a-bloom
With ling, and sweet with fragrance of the peat;
And there not listening, looking, hardly living
But as a part of Universal Being,
She felt the sun that glinted on the sea,
The distant waves that dallied with the shore,
The vapoury drift, like cobwebs on the blue,
The silent shadows wandering o'er the hills,
And tenderer, homelier than the sighs tumultuous
Of winds which won through rifts of autumn leafage,
She heard the wandering breeze that swept her brow

Ring tuneful through the bells of mountain heather,
And thought the only mother she had known,—
Wild Nature—as she nestled to her heart,
Sung her to rest with that soft lullaby.

But sounds more earthly came to vex her peace;
And Mona from her balmy pillow rose
To look and listen like a startled hind;
And heard the panting of a labouring heart
At battle with the mountain's rugged side,
Then saw the sleek, preened head of Bronwen, rising
Slowly above the rock, and the two eyes
That caught a stonier glitter meeting hers,
Closing upon her while the face recoiled,—
Shrunk back,—as might have shrunk the small barbed head
Of some fair-painted beast before it struck.

And Mona, gazing, trembled as a bird
That fronts the foe foredoomed of all its kind,
But trembling, still advanced a helpful hand
To steady Bronwen's unaccustomed steps,
As one who does the honours of her home.

The woman past her by, and set her back
Firm to the rock; Mona gave way, and left
The breadth of all the level space betwixt them;
Then kneeling, rested on the giddy verge,
But wound her arm about a sapling ash
Deep-rooted in a fissure of the rock;
And thus she faced her foe, and gave her back
A gaze more firm, more potent than her own,
Flashed from a heart that owned more living fire,
And steadied by a soul that would not swerve
For danger, though her strength were overmatched.

The maiden was a merle but in her song,
And in the prescience of her tuneful spirit;
Woman to woman was the duel now.

So Mona waited watchfully, while Bronwen,
Who first had sought her as we chase a child,
Felt driven by the question of her eyes
To answer straightly wherefore she was come
To trespass on the peace of her retreat.

She spoke; a little fading of the rose
Whose wont it was to keep unaltered state

On Bronwen's cheek; some catching of the breath
Spent by the way, betrayed that now she owned
The need of each reserve of craft and cunning.

‘I've tracked you, panting, up this irksome path,
Fit but for bare-boned beasts who hunt for life;
I am too much your friend to let you wander
In desperation, knowing of no shelter
Where one outcast from Garth would be let in.’

And Mona answered her:

‘Outcast from Garth?’
But as an echo answering from the hills
Which seems to mock the sound that gave it birth.

Then Bronwen:

‘Yea, I said outcast from Garth;
Not wholly of their will who are its lords;
For that same pity which of old time opened
The arms of Modwyth, leaving cold her heart,
Would open to you still, and take you back.
But by my heart I gauge the height of yours;
The blood of Connaught kings would surely scorn

Not less than mine, the burthen of a debt
Your nature hath denied you to repay.’

Here Bronwen paused; she saw how Mona's eyes
Were set a-far, as if her gaze could pierce
The mountains' heart, and thought

‘She reads her fate
By the new light wherein my wit hath set it.’

But Mona caught no light from Bronwen's words;
She only bent more near, and said, with voice
That fluttered and was tender with appeal:

‘What of the council,—they will hold their lives,
And blood of their brave hearts, in fee for Britain?’

Then Bronwen eyed her doubtfully, scarce knowing
If she were matched with an adept, who sought
To flout the world of reasonable folk,
With shadows men agreed to christen ‘holy,’
Or if—more like—this maiden were a thing

So strange and unrelated to her kind,
That craft itself was baffled by her folly.

And Mona said again: ‘Tell me of Eurien;
He shamed each man that looked but to his own,—
He swayed all hearts to work the work of God?’
Then Bronwen scornfully: ‘He is a man
Himself, our Eurien, ay, a very man;
For all his golden curls and heaven-blue eyes,
He is no carved and painted cherub, made
To smile and stare while robbers sack his shrine.
At peep of day to-morrow, he, and all
Who find their best account in Eurien's favour,
Armed, mounted, and in secret, will fare forth
And settle odds with Cynorac.’

Mona said
No word, but on her face there fell a veil
Like that the face of nature which she loved
Spread when she travailed in mysterious woe;
And soothingly, as one might still a babe,
Who reading anguish in its mother's eyes,
Gives noisy voice to what she inly feels,
She laid her slim white hand athwart the harp
About to wail an answer to the wind.

Then Bronwen's voice, grown bold through Mona's silence:
‘Modwyth is wrath at you, as Eurien is;
She holds you to have shamed her matron teaching,
Lifting your voice unmaidenly, in defiance
Of men as full of wisdom as of honour,
Some, reverend with years. And worse, yet worse,—
A rank offence that time alone may mend—
Eurien is shamed of you, his place and office
Usurped, the mandate of his mouth reversed,
His motives set at naught, held up and shaken
Before his face in scorn, while he and all
The chivalry of Wales are hailed as beasts
Because like men they battle for their own.
This flame of wrath will not be quenched to-day,
Our hope must be to stay its further havoc;
I am your friend, and they who know me such,
Now wish me speed in this: that I may win you
To bide with me at Havod till this fire
Burn itself out. You will not be beholden
To me as eke to them; my life is lonely,—
A widowed woman’—

Mona suddenly:

‘I have not shamed him! None may Eurien shame
But Eurien's self. It was not he who spoke
Of his great heart those straightened words,—not he
Of his free self,—some warlock had conjured,
Subdued him with a spell, and used his tongue.
I thought that I was dumb; I know at first
Speech fluttered at my heart, but lost the way
From out my lips, that then’—

She struck a chord,
The same wild call which Weroc had obeyed.
‘I knew not that I spoke, a bird's shrill note
Had all sufficed to wake him from such bonds.
Yet wherefore did he look on me in wrath?
Hah! was I held like him,—he forced to speak
The words that did him wrong, I, like to one
In evil dream, unable to give forth
The cry which cleft my heart, that so I left him
Unsuccoured in the grasp of some fell fiend?
But yet I tell you, Eurien will not go
To crush a gnat that stings him while the heart
Of Britain lets forth life; his love is fervid,
His soul is high, and made to serve high ends;
Not such as he are mastered by a weird,

Albeit they may’—

Then Bronwen with a voice
That clanged against and quelled her silvery speech:
‘Maiden, well said, our chieftain's love is fire;
Therein hath lain the secret of the spell
Which makes him put aside for once, the call
Of bleeding Britain, while a living love
Hath wrongs his strong man's heart would first redress.’

Then there was silence on the lonely Clogwyn,
While eyes relentless as the grip of death
Fastened on Mona; but her face was dark,
The sun behind her finding out red gleams
Of colour in her hair,—a saintly nimbus
Brightening towards martyrdom; her head was drooped
Low on her bosom; all that Bronwen noted
Was how the ashen stock that was encircled
By Mona's arm, trembled against the sky.
Then Mona faintly:

‘Eurien owns no love
Would pit her wrongs against the wrongs of Britain;
Modwyth is noble, and —’

‘And is his mother!
And Mona half his sister, half a merle!
One is a household thing a man is born to,
And takes unnoted as he takes his breath;
The other is a creature of the air,
Brought up beside his hearth,—and still untamed.
'Tis not for loves like these a man will cast
His country to the winds, his soul away!
But you, poor child, what mean such words to you,
Who never knew the warmth of mother's arms,
Far less that answering glow which kindles us
Who stand within that fiery sphere, whose centre
Is a man's heart a-blaze with love!’

Then Mona:
‘He loves me, he is pitiful; not so,
But custom is no bar to tender hearts;
He loves me! I was little when I came,
No higher than my heart is now; and weak,
And sickly, and I had not learnt to sing!
How had I grown if I had felt no warmth?
How had I gotten strength and learnt to sing
If light had never shone on me? They lie
Who say he loves me not; his love is deep,

Patient, and calm, as deathless things alone
May dare to be!’—

Said Bronwen: ‘Very patient
Is Eurien's love, if love he own for you!
Patient, and heavenly calm.
‘'Tis now three years
Since you exchanged your troth; you marvel not
That he should sit beside you at the ingle,—
A saint who having nought to do but pray,
Forgets to tell his beads. To you it seems
Not strange that he should let the seasons grow,
From hot to cold, and speak no word of marriage.
Truly, a love seraphic! I were happy—
Ay, to the topmost bent of happiness—
If Eurien's calm and patient love, that looks
For full fruition in some far-off sphere,
Were yours, the while I lay within his arms,
And felt against mine own his beating heart!’

Then suddenly aloud on Clogwyn Cromlech,
A mingled cry, the shriek of tortured pines,
And Mona's wind-swept harp, and it might be
Some passionate escape of Mona's breath,

Rising together in a wail of woe
That dashed itself against the stony hills,
Which muttered to each other of her pain.

But Bronwen's stonier heart made no response;
Though the swift-passing shadow of great wings
Darkened her brow a moment, as the eagle
Swooped towards its nest in terror for its young.

And Mona, risen to her feet, spoke out,
And, like a baited thing that makes appeal
From some harsh judge, she wandered with her eyes
About the crowded hills in search of pity.

‘He loves me! He can never prove that false,—
Not hers his heart, but mine,—my promised home;
Let her not dare to speak of trespass there!
He loves me. Whose the name which first he calls
Returning from the mountains? Whose the hand
He trusts with all behests which touch him nearest?
No arrow that I have not winged and pointed
Will Eurien arm him with; he will not draw
A bow I have not stringed; take a false fly

To lure his fish with, that I have not made.
My fingers are not quick and deft as hers,
My eye so ready, I have little cunning
In women's works and ways; how should I earn
His praise alone, but that his love creates
The skill my hands are lacking in for others?
He loves me; oh, he loves me; I am here,—
I could not be alive without his love!’

And then she sank again upon the ground,
And clasped her breast, and locked her sorrow there.

Then Bronwen: ‘Child, he loves you as his hound,
Stroking your head when you have served him well;
Or as his falcon that he blinds with jesses,
Then perches—blindly happy—on his wrist;
So are you hood winked; but I tell you this:
If Eurien loved you in another sort,—
Loved you as man loves woman,—if his eyes
Grew hungry as he gazed on you, his kisses
Clung to your lips,—it would be he not you
Who did this yeoman's service,—you who set him
All blind and dazed with love, to bide your bidding.

And you who hold him dear, I tell you too,—
You think you love him, but you love him not;
Else were you full content with all he did:—
His lowest act were high enough for you!’

Mona was silent, holding down her heart
Which beat as though it beat against a rock;
The world went round with her, the mountains heaved;
What need of words to justify her pangs?
She died for, but she had not so learned love.

Bronwen again:

‘He loves you as a man
Of eager purpose loves the thing that rears
Itself against his will; loves you as one
May love the ghost that holds him to the promise
Of his green, careless youth, and dims the light
That might have gilt his present and his future.
O Mona!’

Bronwen's voice broke here, and took
A sudden prayerfulness; her words were sowing
Conviction in herself,—a shallow crop

As suited to the soil,—but still conviction
Which served the cause she pleaded:—

‘Hear me, Mona,
Beseech you do not stand betwixt us twain,
Making life dark for both! Have you no eyes?—
No natural cunning such as teaches women
To snatch the meaning of an unlearnt lesson?
You read the runes, and shame with studious lore
Our able-handed but unlettered lords,
Yet fail to read that Eurien's soul recoils
From such vain boasts of learning as he shares not;
That Eurien loves a humble port in women,
Nor that alone, but loves a lowlier mind
In creatures lowlier born. You have grown up
A fledgling at his hearth, so loved and cherished,
So to be loved again;—but as his wife!
No, things so cross in nature are not joined,
Or joined but to be rent apart for ever.
O Mona, I could make his life a joy,
Loving him as we love who are no better
Than women, setting up nor scale nor measure
For those above us. I would make his home
A resting-place from each uneasy effort;

The very eagle cannot hold his weight
For ever in the sky; and Modwyth too
Should cease from care as feeling that a hand
More strenuous than her own was guiding all.
I love him, and I tell you he loves me;
I to his eyes own kinship as a magnet,
That draws upon its path their fiery steel;
He turns from you unmoved, to find and claim
His part in me; mark too how Modwyth's face
Looks coldlier on you day by day; she learning
To see in you the clog of Eurien's joy—
A joy, the birthright of his meanest thrall.
Have you no virgin pride that you should bind
His honour when his heart is in revolt?’

The rush of words broke over her unheard;
Mona had risen from her lowly seat,
And standing on the verge, her soul past forth
Over the golden bridge which crossed the sea.
There fell a lull; a moment of deep calm;
The winds that had been loud awhile agone
Now held their breath; what lesser grief would dare
To break the silence of a widowed love?

Sweet Christ! But there is woe so great, it rends
The bands that bind it; darkness that fulfils
So vast a sphere that it must somewhere touch
The skirts of light! The tokens of such woe,
Such darkness, now fell on the face which Mona
Turned to the sun that hasted to his end
I' the flaming pyre of clouds which waited still
To crown him with far-reaching shafts of glory.

The stillness seemed to lighten all the air;
The vacant hush to make more room for life,
But life that soared beyond the reach of thought;
The tinkle of a sheep-bell in the vale
Was all the sound that beat the march of time.

Through Mona swept a thrill of parting love
So keen, so rare, that if it was a pang
It was a pang undying, and so wore
The awful beauty of immortal things.
And a new revelation rose within her:
The Psalm of Life was opened to her ear;
She knew the mystery of the tuneful spring,
The deep, full pulsing of the summer eve,

And autumn's teeming, consummated lifê,
And winter's hope congealed within its heart.

Then suddenly she drew her life, outspread
Upon the universe, within herself;
Gathered her thoughts, and turned with searching question
On Bronwen as she stood, all over-streamed
By golden sunbeams, set against a bank
Pranked with the ruddy tips of whortle leaves.
So weighed the woman's charms, their power and worth;
The brow no thought had knit, the furtive eyes
Softened by lengthening shadows of the hour;
The clear ripe cheek, and lips the autumn sun
Was hotly kissing: eyes, and cheeks, and lips
That were not faint or fierce with famished love;
Then marked the pillared throat, and stately sweep
Of shoulder, and the plenteous bosom, heaved
With quiet breath; all smooth and fair and sheeny
In the full blossom of her earthly beauty.

As Mona gazed her own young eyes grew dull,

Her cheek and lip wan as with loveless years;
A sickness of the heart, a chill, a dimness,
A motion of the stedfast things without;—
And still through all she saw that woman blaze
In the all-conquering charms which lure men's love;
Herself a creature only born to feel
Love's shaft, and perish of its wound, not one
A man were proud to heal upon his heart.
Alas! she was not lovely, save to eyes
Of love; to such, I think no shadowed pool
Whose darkling screen the sun has broken through,
That—seized with sudden longing—he might kiss
Its face, had sent so brave an answer back!

But darkness now lay thick on Mona's soul,
For all the light that bathed the world was Bronwen's,
And Bronwen's glory seemed to blind her eyes
And sing its mocking pæans in her ears.
Only through all the anguish and the strife
And dimness of her soul, she grasped and held
One thought:

‘He shall not lose his life for me,
God give me strength to die and leave them so,—

And first to fly,—but whither?’

Then her eyes
Swept the horizon's verge, and felt the world
A desert of all howling miseries,
And with her hands she warned it off from her,—
The weird, wild world, and bright calm woman there
Who mocked her with the beauty that he loved,—
She pushed it from her, and her steps recoiled—
A shriek !—It was not Mona,—she was gone,
Gone from the giddy verge, gone, gone from pain,
And giddiness of unpreparëd act,
Caught up! yea, God, I say it yet again,
Caught up from her despair, caught up by Thee,
Rapt, lifted by Thine arm, great God for whom
There is nor high nor low, above, beneath,
Darkness or death, but only light and love!

And Bronwen was alone on Clogwyn Cromlech,
Bathed in the sun's red glow from head to foot;
Clinging with hands convulsed to the wild growths
Behind her, as she stared upon the orb
That searched her with his unobstructed beam,
And on the lonely ashen-stock that stood

Upright against the sky, and looked unmoved
Upon the horror of the depths below.

And as she clung and trembled, clung and broke
Now and anon the stillness, with a cry,
Feebler, more smothered as the moments past,
She came to feel the warmth upon her heart,
And her slow-pacëd blood began to move
Once more within her veins, and shudderingly,
As one nigh drowned returns again to life,
She saw as writ on the uncovered sky
The ordered course of prosperous days to come;
And her set lips, bereft of the warm tint
Which masked their coldness, showed all pitiless
With greed, and leanings hard and obdurate
As those of savage creatures that disdain not
To nourish their low lives upon their kind.

And there alone, alone on Clogwyn Cromlech,
With nought between her and the dread abyss
Where Mona and her love lay bound in death,
Bronwen still trembled, groaning as in pain,
Yet heard a voice half-stifled, all unbidden,

Speaking from out some secret depth unknown:
‘As now you are alone on Clogwyn Cromlech,
So now you are alone in Eurien's love.’

And then she crept, still holding by the tufts
Of verdure in the rocks, and dyed her hands
With blood of strangled berries as she went,—
Crept with such speed as shaking limbs and feet
Unused could master, down the mountain slope,
And saw her craven shadow quivering
Beside her on the rock, and heard aghast
The uncertain echo of her steps behind her,
But dared not turn to look, lest she should see
Some demon form, or, all being yet so new,
Some slender woman shape less welcome still.

Then I, Glân-Alarch, met her; her white brow
Dashed with the guilty colour of her hands;
Grasping the rocky ledges, and the stems
Of herbage, and descending scared and haggard,
Stumbling with haste and terror.

So we two
Bore wildly to the house at Garth a tale
Which raised it, and the country all around.

And I that am Glân-Alarch know not well
What then I heard, what gathered, as I gleaned
The field of after knowledge; or ere garnered
For use as now, how much I winnowed out
Of chaff to find the grains of truth; but know
That, being Glân-Alarch, never word could set me
On any act of Mona, but the clue
Guiding her spotless soul thereto, would come
Straight to my hand as quickened by my love.

For even as man must be, or else God's world
Were not, as now it is,—wanting the soul
Whereto it makes appeal,—so we who sing
Are as the very dew-drops of mankind,
Which mirror all, and—

Nay, I can no more!

The hall was empty, but disordered still
By the late presence of the council guests;
With reek of viands heavy in the air,
And luscious fumes of mead.

There Bronwen stood
And told her tale again, with loud-voiced grief,

Stammering, with chattering teeth, and quivering chin.
And Modwyth heard, and dropped as one struck down
By the last stroke of doom; but Eurien made
With feet that were as wings, for the lone hollow
That yawned beneath the heights.

He was a hunter,
But never quarry had he sought before,
With quailing heart as now.

He nothing found;
Searching each crevice, plunging with wild eyes
And eager hands, in every bush, and mounting
At desperate risk to ledges half way up
The rock's blank face, there was no shape to see
Living or dead; no shred of stuff, no bough
Broken or bent; no sign however small
Of any passage of a mortal thing;
Only, a long way off, a cloud of wings,
Dark wings that faded as he looked, and told
Of eyes that had been baffled as his own.

And Eurien returned, and called to horse
As many of his men as he could mount,
And set them, for their part, to scour the plain.

All through the night it was as if the stars
Had left their wonted courses, and were seeking
Our lost one on the mountains; so the torches
Gleamed through the dark, to sicken with the dawn.

Our Chieftain went not forth at peep of day
To wreak his wrath on Cynorac, but came
Faint with the fruitless search, his silken curls
All heavy with night-dew, his garments sodden,
And laid a clammy cheek on Modwyth's breast,
And clasped her, frail and slender, in his arms,
As if to stay her sorrow; but few words
Were past betwixt the two; I think each felt
And knew the other felt a weight that hung
More dead about the heart than grief alone.

So Eurien headed not the march on Cynorac
Nor that day, nor the next; but plied his search
And woke the region all about with question,
But never came an answer back to him.
Only he knew that none could fall and live
From Cromlech heights, and all he strove to gain
Was a sad wreck to hide beneath the sod.

Then as the days went past there grew about her,
And all the thought of her, the sacredness
That rises from fresh graves; and lightest fancies
That haply they had scorned awhile ago,
Were as the daisies of her bed of death;
While all that once had stirred her spirit's depths
Was lighted by a sudden shaft of glory.

So Eurien laid on Mona's unknown grave
The vengeance he had thought to take on Cynorac.

And I, Glân-Alarch, live,—live still to chant
This song of death,—live still, unlike the swan
Who sings his troubled life away, and makes
His fond farewell to pain!

Oh, if mine heart
Would bleed to death in song I would sing on;
But as my life hath been the mock of Fate,
So is my withered frame the scorn of Death;
If I must bide for ever to be howled at
By all the winds of heaven, I will howl
No answer back, but bide for ever dumb.
Glân-Alarch now hath spoken his last word.

BOOK II.

Our silent house of Garth, whereon the winds
And driving rains of autumn sadly beat,
Gave back no answer to the wild appeal;
What soul of us had voice or heart to chide
That fleeces dropped from off rank sheep; that seed
Slept idle in the granaries; that strength
Of man and beast were lost in labouring
Ground which had shut it in so close a grave,
The angel of the spring had called in vain
To resurrection. ‘Let him call,’ I said
Within my heart, benumbed with sullen pain;
‘Let the world rot, and its false promise sleep
For aye, since sleep is good, though death is best!’

So in the dumbness of the house we two,
The elders, we on whom the stroke of grief

Fell sorest, seeing for us no new quick rush
Of life rolled back the stone from off the heart,
Sate by the fire, our days as dull and pale
As the wan embers whereupon we looked,
And envied that their goal was reached so soon.

And sitting thus it liked me well to hear
The moaning of the wind, the wandering wind,
Which might have brushed a secret in its course,—
The happy wind that could not know or feel!

If Modwyth heard it too, she heeded not;
She met these empty days with idle hands,
Save that they grasped her skirts, as set thereto
By one who feared impediment to flight,
And sate uneasily, with waiting face,
Which spoke unto a heart which was the heart
Still of Glân-Alarch, answering to my look:
‘There children twain await me; here but one.’
So sorrow drew a circle round us two
Whose spheres had never crossed in happier hours.

Shriek clamorous winds and give our griefs a tongue,
For he whose lips once overflowed with song
As autumn combs with honey, now is grown
The core of silence in this silent house.
Rave wordless winds, obsequious to our woe,
Break clouds, and blind the eyes of heaven with tears,
For sad Glân-Alarch will be heard no more;
Yet would he, but for what is left in him
Of manhood, lift his broken voice on high
And cry you down with grief unsyllabled.

Ay, break your rage, rough winds, upon these stones,
For they are old, and ancient things most move
The hate that curdles at the heart of life;
Ravage these walls of pale wind-flowers that harbour
And bloom within their chinks; no colour bless,
Nor perfume bathe their bareness evermore!

So in my heart I answered to the wind,
Content that it should howl as with our woe;
But when the birds, befooled by struggling gleams
Of sunshine glinted through the rended clouds,

Piped dubiously, as they foretasted spring,
I shut them from mine ears, as summer friends
Unmannerly, who chatter of our loss,
And turned me from the fickle sun away
That dared to smile on wintry nakedness.

O my white hairs! O eyes that see too far
The griefs that march on us through every pass,
Armed companies to ring us round, and crush us
Here in our mountain cage! O weak right arm
That fain had lent to Eurien its strength;
O song, that wast already as a voice
Breaking, not richly to virility,
But poorly to the pulpless infancy
That waits on length of days;—thou, even thou;
Sad song, art prisoner in the war of life,
And never from thy dungeon may break forth,
Nay, not to raise a standard of high hope,
Or lift my chieftain's name above the wreck.

But clearer than the bodings of the wind,
More timeous than the piping of the birds,
There came to us as there we sate and watched

The smoke-wreaths curl, sounds of a mimic strife,—
The tramp of marching feet, the clash of arms,
And Eurien's voice uplifted in command,
Coming to fill the gaps in home and heart
With Eurien's shining image.

I, Glân-Alarch,
Heard it, and thought the world which now seemed dead,
Might haply be rekindled by the sparks
Struck out from steel; and Modwyth heard it, with me,
And loosed her skirts, content to bide the issue;
Or, if she sorted silks, would ravel all
In trembling haste, and leave them in her lap.
Fair Bronwen heard it, and her ivory throat,
Leaned sedulous above some household task,
Would rear itself, which while her side-long glance
Would seem to pierce like wind-blown hail, and reach
The place where Eurien's levies daily learnt
The grammar of the blood-red tongue of war.
Then she would call her thoughts to heal, and pluck
With gentle force from Modwyth's hand, the threads
To disengage from knots, and lay them spread
All fairly out beneath her heedless fingers.

I think, in sooth, that life could show few knots
The woman's nimble tact had not won through;
But shears had served her turn where fingers failed.

Oh in these days our wounds had stately tendance;
For our still house, whose pulse might else have ceased,
Or beat disorderly, was kept in time,
And held in active function, in the grasp
Of Bronwen's supple hand,—content to guide
Her house of Havod and its impish heir
With longer rein, or furtive visits stolen
From sleep, or much-beholden hours of rest.
And so it grew to be that all the place
Was filled as with a whisper of her presence,
Which chased the dust from distant corridors,
Which set in motion idle feet and hands,
And turned again the groaning wheels of life,
Laying a web of comfort, and of healing
Ev'n on the very gashes of our hearts.

When Eurien's voice no longer from the vale
Clove the dull air about our stagnant hearth,
And Eurien's self undid the door, and came—

His beauty dashed a little by the rain,
With tumbled gold of beard, and hair, bespread
Over the face the steely showers made pale,—
I loved him that he showed so comfortless,
And prized him dearer for his beauty's loss.

But Bronwen's love—if that she loved him too—
Was humble at such times, and challenged not
His notice, as with motion swift she gave
The sign which brought a servile train to crown
The board with ordered plenty; whereupon
Would follow a wild troop of squires and pages,
And shaggy men of various estate,
Who shared the wrongs of Eurien and of Wales,
And fattened them at Eurien's daily cost.

Then Bronwen, like the spirit of good cheer,—
But for a spirit all too busked and sleek,—
Carved and apportioned with a dextrous choice
The meats and winter fruits, the cakes and bread,—
Some fine and honey-sweetened, some of rye
That, soured with age, was still found sweet enough
For palates not perplexed with dainty use.

And Bronwen's face would shine on us, but most
On Eurien, as shines the moon when gilt
To be the lamp of such as house the harvest;
But unto those wild men who pressed around,
And drank deep draughts, and emptied mighty trenchers,
Her looks were strange and cold; still like the moon,
But like it on its darkened nether side.

Oh days both sad and heavy !—weariest days
Will pass, and these, if heavy, pass'd too soon!
The honest sorrow of our hearts was changed
Ere long for bastard peace. The eyes of Modwyth
Would wander off from reading Eurien's face,
To gaze on Bronwen's, and then back again,
Till to and fro, her glance would seem to spin
A web about, and bind the twain in one.

Then the false winds forgot to moan, the vain
Light heavens put back their tears, the sun looked out
Cold, cold as justice, or as charity;
The robin, like a wretch that sings for bread,
Quavered harsh notes,—and all the world went mad.

No no, it was not love that came to chase
Grim sorrow from our hearts; had it been love,
High love indeed, which had been born for Eurien—
Though sprung from out a grave too newly trenched—
I should have owned its presence as a thing
Divine,—though somewhat rathe in its approach;
If I had tasked it that it came too soon,
I had not held it pestilent as now.

But I, Glân-Alarch, I have lived too long,
The hours now pass me by with leaden feet,
And the swift years reel after them, and seem
To gain upon them in the race of time;
The moments, long for grief, still bring short months,
That come to aged hearts too soon for joy.

There hath been feasting in the halls of Garth,
Feasting and wassail, though the soul of mirth
Seemed dead within our midst, or rapt away
As liking not our company. The feast
Had been of marriage; wildly shrilled the pipes,
And like to froward tongues the cymbals clanged,
Tearing the seemly silence from our woe,

As one might strip the cerements from a corpse.
Then when the shouting and the clangour failed
For weariness, and we were set at even,
In rank about the board, Bronwen looked round
Sheer in my face,—for there had come a gap
Of the old silence, which her haughty eye
Commanded me to fill. She was the queen
And lady of us all, Bronwen the wise,
Whose beauty was the theme of many a song;
And more than all, she was a chosen bride
Of Eurien, lord and owner of my heart;
But still my pallid gaze gave back to hers
Denial which she could not overbear.

The silence lingered yet awhile, then broke,
Broke of itself, and with a heavy crash
As of a body fallen upon the hearth;
When all the hall from floor to blackened rafters,
Kindled with sudden fire, and there arose
A note as if our scantly buried sorrow
Had gotten loose, and found itself a voice
Tuned to the pattern of the woeful wind.
A shudder seemed to wind us all in one

For one brief moment, as at ghostly bidding,
Our souls rose up and wandering through the night,
Left empty bodies in our seats, the while
They shivered in the wind on Clogwyn Cromlech.

Then Eurien turned, and showed the wolf-hound, Abred,
Whom falling of a yule-log had awakened,
Howling his weird defiance at the moon;
Whereon our souls came back to us again.

Our Chieftain hailed the wolf-dog to his place,
And called on us to let the harp go round;
But I leaned back, nor touched it with a breath;
While Bronwen took it in her hands, and held
A moment all familiarly, as one
Who loving not a babe, still loves to twit it;
Then striking, made it cry aloud, and laughed;
It was her hour of triumph, when light ripples
Dance lightly into waves; she looked my way
Once more, and sweetly to our Chieftain said,
Though bitterly to me:

‘It seems, my lord,

As if your house of Garth, where for you win
This day a mistress, is not very tuneful,
That it should lack a bard to laud the feat.’

And Eurien, who had watched her with a smile,
Sitting there crowned and radiant at his side,
Fretting the harp, which seemed too slight a thing
To thwart a soul so royally enhoused,—
Stretched forth his sovereign hand to grip mine own;
But answered nought, and spared to meet mine eye.

But I spoke up:

‘There have been harpers twain
Here in this house of Garth, whom every breath
Of Eurien stirred to music. One is dead,—
Since when the other hath left off to sing.’

Oh Eurien, you were gracious thus to suffer
My heart to rise in judgment of your own;
But Modwyth frowned, and Bronwen to her side
Beckoned a henchman brought with her from Havod;
One who was used to twang and thrum the harp
In time for dancing; in good sooth the varlet

Could boast a dexterous finger; in his hand
She set it, all its triple chords perplexed
With a jarred sigh; filled him a foaming flagon,
And wreathing round his breast some woven flowers
Snatched from the board, proclaimed him Bard of Garth.

But Eurien stayed her here: ‘Thy bard, sweet Bronwen,
And Havod's; but for Garth, that post is filled,
And in another sort;’ then turned to Dafyth;
‘Bard of the fairest lady in the land,
A lighter lot is yours.’

And so he took
From off his neck a golden chain, and threw
Over his lady's flowers, and smiled on her:

‘Sweetheart, it seems that you have still to learn
Whom you may bind with flowers, and whom with gold.’

But Bronwen waited not on Eurien's words
For following of the chain he cast away.

Then Eurien again:

‘Beseech you, lady,
Command your bard to strike some merry chord;
For ours, he hath been, and he shall be ever,
Free from all strain but music and his mood.’

Then Dafyth seized the harp, and made its strings
To caper till its fallen music seemed
To habit in the heels of all our guests,
Who loud upon the floor beat out the time.
So as the mead past round, and voices rose,
And Dafyth harped, with harpings emulous
Against the rising babble,—harped and scared
Shy music from the blatant strings,—I went
Unnoted from the glowing hall, and stole
Alone into the white, moon-lighted night,
And stood beside the fall, where it had crashed
A passage for itself through prisoning ice.
Here, when the heart-deep roaring of the flood
Had failed a moment, followed after me
The voice of mirth and jingle of the harp,
But tenderer grown with distance, till at last
The cataracts loud wordless rage filled all

The cavern of mine ear; and one by one
The chambers in the turrets glimmered forth
Like stars into the night. And then my soul
Closed on itself the door, and knelt within
A chamber yet more secret, seeing nought,
And haply only soothed by the deep boom
Of the vexed mountain torrent. So I prayed
For Eurien's glory and for Eurien's peace,
If peace and honour might consort together;
For nuptial joys, and strength of joinëd lives,
And worthy issue, linking him with years
To come, when he from off the earth should cease.

And as I woke from prayer, I felt a warmth
Bathing my hand; felt too, and heard a breath
Taken with mighty pants, close at my side.
The clouds had overlapped the moon, and all
Was dun as death, but still I knew that thing
Which pressed against my side was wakeful love.
Then from the humid warmth I freed my hand,
And raising, rested it with inside touch
Upon the brow of Myneth, Mona's hound,
That from the day when she had gone from Garth

Had vanished as her body, none knew where.
I think I cried a cry, as Myneth's breath
And greeting were a moment on my face;
But not a whimper of her joy made answer,
And promptly at a signal far beneath
The black brow of the hill, she, bounding off,
Was swallowed in the silence of the night.

And stumbling through the darkness, I made haste
To look from off the hill where she went down,
And thought one moment I discerned a light—
Most like a wandering candle of the marsh;—
And then I pressed my failing eyes, and looked
Once more, and it was gone, and I was fain
To doubt if I had seen, felt, greeted aught
More solid than a vision which had come
To soothe or mock the hunger of the heart.

And so the marriage feast of Eurien past,
While silence hung upon my lip like lead.

That year the days grew long before their time;
The sun shone late and early, and keen winds
Drove home its beams through all the sodden fallows

And marshy flats, and aired the drenchëd world.
And heads that had lain fallow with the fields
Through the slow winter, now grew rife with thoughts
Of husbandry, while others, lightlier bent,
Woke at the beckoning of the beam and breeze
To wandering fancies, straggling wild as weeds.

So, wise or thriftless, they who were content
In meagre winter months to take our cheer,
Lodging and pottage, and to lend themselves
As journeymen to learn the trade of war,
Rose up together with the stir of spring,
Bade us God speed, and left us to ourselves.

Oh then the face of Bronwen at the board,—
The lesser board whose viands were more choice
And service daintier,—shone, a radiant sphere
That kept no darkened half for outside souls.

And sitting in the flickering light at eve,
Filled full with work and cheer, and blown by winds
As precious as the ransom of a king,
Some of us haply nodded o'er the blaze,

Our senses lapped by murmurous tongues of flame;
But Eurien with his ice-blue eyes would gaze
Undaunted on the embers' burning heart,
Turning within his own, as well I knew,
Deep thoughts whose hour of action was not yet.

Then Bronwen's fingers, shedding of their work,
Would twine themselves within, and unclasp Eurien's
Close knotted as they were, and reach his palm
With hers, as warm as the full-podded flax
That ripens in the sun, and whisper him;
That sweeter thoughts were his for close of day,
Than plans for ploughing fields, or seeding furrows;—
It was her art t' interpret thus his mind;—
And then when she had won him from his mood,
And got his softened eyes to speak her fair,
Taking sweet rest, all languorously reclined,
Bathed in the ruddy glow,—the woman in her
Was well content, exulting in her power.

For honour and for peace, if they might grow
Together on one tree of life, my prayer
To God for Eurien; and the days which came

Brought peace and plenty to our house of Garth,
But honour, more than ever, was his meed
At tilt and tourney where his lance was first,—
In skirmish with our brawling chiefs, or such
As daring hunter wins from his compeers,—
Was yet to crown our chieftain's tawny locks.
And I who loved him better than my life,
And—sooth to say it—better than his own,
Grew jealous of the cheek that waxed too fair
With body's health, and spirit's dull content;
And ever when we two came face to face,
I strove to prick his heart with memory
Of Cymric wrong, and all that brood of sorrows
Which, if it seemed to snatch a moment's rest,
Would waken with a wilder throb ere long.

And sometimes with that look which took all hearts,
Eurien would turn on me, and bid me trust
The tardy healing power of Cymric wounds;
And sometimes he, without a word, would lay
My hand upon his girdle, where that other
Holding the leaden missile, pressed his heart;
Anon would make complaint that men and times

Were yet not ripe for action; at which word
I would approve to him that souls heroic
In this were demi-gods,—that they could breathe
Or shine on men and times, and ripen both.
And then at whiles upon his lip and brow
Would come that pallor of the refluent blood,
And to his eyes that look of one who saw
Fruit in the flower, and seed within the fruit,
Which boded that his spirit had been summoned
On high, to meet a council of his peers.
Then I, who humbly loved him, sat and thought
Rejoicingly, that he in his young wisdom
And guarded strength, was greater far than I
Who, in my unthrift impotence of age,
Had fought a giant with unmeasured swords.

The year fulfilled itself; the earth once more
Was pregnant with the slowly-ripening grain.
And Bronwen was the lady of the land;
A fair, firm woman; one who ruled her house
As Eurien his state; nay, ruled her house
But ruled it in another sort than he,
Who, like a god, gave back with rich increase

100

His lieges' tribute and their fitful service;
Shielding the weak, and lifting up the low,
Pruning the insolence of pride, and storing
Scant fruit for all his pain, to leave a harvest
More generous for the gleaners of his fields.

But not so Bronwen, who from day to day
Waxed as the waxing moon in all that made
The ordered sweep and circle of her life:
More affluent in beauty and in honour,
With hands more flush of power, and of means
Of making by accretion; with an ocean
Of duty it became her part to rule,—
A sea with tides that shifted with the seasons,
And runnels intersecting all the shores
That bordered it. So waxed she in her place,
And so her shadow broadened all around.

As Bronwen, like the moon that fills her horn,
Rounded to perfect shape, so Modwyth waned,
Like the sad evening star that tends on her.
But Modwyth's will had triumphed, and some hold
That woman's will is woman's paradise.

101

If such were hers, it was a fading portion;
I, cowering o'er the hearth, Eurien a-field,
Watched the frail fingers twisting threads of flax,
Grow thin and whiter as the weeks rolled on,
And weak, I thought, for lack of stronger work.

But when the even of each day was come,
When babes were hushed, and labour sought repose,
The wheel of Modwyth by an empty chair
Stood silent, while from hut to hut there passed
A presence with a hand outstretched, that dropped
Comfort as God drops flowers upon the fields;
And for some sickness never to be cured,
Or only by th' all-healing sleep of death,
At whiles from Modwyth's faded lips flowed out
Words, which were glowing with a light, that touched
The rampant ill with glory, till it seemed
To pierce the gloom which wraps all human thought,
And shine an upraised banner of new hope.

So plenty reigned at Garth; the kine increased,
Fat beeves were in the stall, the milking pails
Were foaming to the brim; lush fruits flowed in,

102

Seed-pods yet green and tender, burst with fulness,
And succulent roots, with crispëd salad stems,
And juicy leaves, and honey-dropping combs,
Were heaped with fat flesh meats upon the board
Crowned with tall tankards of new wine and mead.
But for all hands that laboured once at Garth
Mine own and Modwyth's were the only four
Untasked to further effort; for the rest,
Each tale of work was doubled, and each thrall
Inept or idle, sent into the fields
To tend the swine, or house and feed with them;
Thus fewer mouths were matched with better fare.

And now no longer like a running stream
The largess of the house flowed out by day,—
By day and eke by night for loud-tongued need;
But times were set apart, when at the gate
Bronwen stood up, fresh as a rain-washed rose,
As ruddy, and deep-bosomed,—with behind her
The piled-up leavings of the house, in face,
The pallid misery which sought relief;—
The palsied age and puling infancy,
The withered youth, and cankered morning prime,

103

The pinched with want, or sore-disgraced of birth;
And ever to mine eye the contrast grew
More harsh;—the lady Bronwen spread more fair,
More dun and haggard showed the dwindling crowd.

Then fences grew where no defence before
Had ever been; the very mountain breeze,
Fresh with the morning and the spring, and bearing
Spice from the gorse, with odour of wild thyme
And gums from opening buds, paused on the threshold,
Nor blew the breath of nature through our lives.

And ever as that plenteous house of Garth
Grew fat but overflowed not, so the land
Around it, held in tribute hands, grew lean.
We of the household, who had used to take
Our share of milk, now lapped the curded cream;
So those without, who once from the same dish
Had dipped with us, were fain to feed on whey.

Oh fair and teeming world, world false as fair,
Whose sweetest blossoms grow from out fresh graves,
Rooting their callous virtues in dead hearts

104

That once have loved them; oh thou falsest spring
That ever breathed on shallow human hopes,—
I, even I, Glân-Alarch,—lusty grown
As a blind capon fed for others' food,—
I, even I rejoiced and hailed the sun;
Strung daisies for the saucy imps who followed
My errant steps; felt my faint heart spring up
As fresh as watered-cresses of the brook;
And one fair morn when all the world ran wild,
When kids were frisking on the mountain's brow,
And streams came leaping down its channelled sides,
I could no longer close my heart to joy,
But stood there laughing with the waterfall.

Oh teeming earth, and spring unearthly fair!
The beauty ye affect is but a mask;
Pranked as ye are,—all green and lush with life,—
Your painted semblance cries aloud of death,
For she who loved,—whom nature loved and feared,—
Lies on her breast past any hope of spring;
Unless she sleeps, and these more plenteous flowers,
Are rosier tinted for her maiden dreams!

105

No, she is dead, the world her tomb, whose fairness
Has rapt her very memory from our hearts;
For Bronwen moves among us quick with life,
Shining with twofold lustre, since we see
In her the sheaf, and beauteous continent
Of a young hope for Eurien and for Glyneth.

And I, even I, a wayward bard, and sullen,
Jealous for love that perished ere its prime,
And loth to love again where love hath been
So deadly to my heart,—I, even I,
Grew tender when I looked on her, the blessed,
The chosen vessel, bearing Eurien's child.

Then like the pregnant year, her beauty grew
More changeful; there would come to her cold breaths
From clouds, which broke in sudden tears; warm languors
That none but Eurien might uphold! and fears
Which he alone could quell. But of all sights
That crossed her, none was grievous in her eyes
As Poplet, with his antic ways, his tags
Of borrowed wisdom, and his inborn cunning,

106

Which often she chastised with cuffs, and rated
With clamour, that unsettled all the house.
So seeing that the wife this while in Bronwen
Had overborne the mother in her heart,
Our lordly chief consigned her forward son
For page's training to a neighbour roof.

And oftentimes when Eurien, returning
At even, sate with her a space withdrawn,
Bronwen would weep, and say his love was cold,
For Cynorac, her foe e'en more than his,—
He who had heaped unnumbered shames upon her,—
Prospered and triumphed in impunity.
And he who first was tender to her mood,
Seeking to smooth her grief with gentle counsel,
Thereafter lightlier put her plaint aside,
Saying: ‘We prosper, let him prosper too;’
Or adding: ‘Let live all who live for Britain.’
Then when she fretted the resisting chord,
Remorse would ofttime wake a dormant echo,
And Eurien's eyes, that turned towards Clogwyn Cromlech
Through Bronwen's comely substance, would behold

107

Things other than they looked on; at these seasons,
His words were few, and like his gaze would seem
As bent on distant journey. He would say:
‘I swore that day as now again I swear,
To know no wrongs but those of Wales,—“Wild Wales”!’

And sighing forth ‘Wild Wales’ in solemn echo
Of a dead voice, there past into his own
A note of music strange to it before.

This while more often than in days gone by
Newsmongering guests would come to share our cheer,
And often even at the mid-day meal
Make light the ponderous meats with laugh and song.

And I, grown loyal as I said, to her
Who was the lady of my lord, and wearing
In heaviness the burthen of his joy,
Seemed to my love confounded with himself,—
Rejoiced to see her gay, and even bore
The recreant mirth of Dafyth's misused harp.

But oftener than all others, when our lord
Who doubted him, was on some distant quest,

108

Weroc would come, and, ere he went his gate,
Stand whispering by the lady, under cover
Of Dafyth's jingling strings, which then would shriek
The louder, while we others gazed aloof,
Silent, as feeling treason in the air.

For at such moments,—Eurien far away,—
It seemed to us that Eurien's unborn child
Should be potential there to keep at bay
Any whom Eurien's presence had abashed.

And Weroc had been with us on a day
Craftily chosen; but few words as yet
Had past between them, and the talk that filled
The vacant hour when all were met in hall
Was hollow as a reed, the while a meaning
Outside of it was borne in covert glances
Betwixt our lady and her down-faced squire.
I left the board ere yet the broth was cold;
My wrath had spoken else; whereon the lady
With lowered voice:

‘He was sole bard of Garth
Ere Dafyth came, and liketh not to hear
Another harping better in his place.’

109

I went out sad as angry, that our house,—
Tuneful in happier days, as summer woods,—
Had come to be the meeting place of daws.

But Weroc when he went this day, had honour
More than his wont, for Bronwen's own white hands
Poured out a stirrup-cup, and bore to him
Without the door, and waited there caressing
His horse the while he drank, and waited still
A while, when having done, he stooped above her
To empty in her ear a parting word.

Then Weroc took his way, and Bronwen hers,
Crossing the court full stately, with a firm
And rhythmic tread, to which her two hands beat
The time, like cymbals clanged triumphantly.

And I who had for Eurien's honour prayed,
And Eurien's peace, if peace might dwell with honour,
Had at the first been fain to be content
With peace and plenty; what if at the last,
Plenty should reign at Garth, and reign alone?

That night brought Eurien home, with him a train,

110

Longer than that wherewith a week agone
He left, to offer fealty to the king
Of the rich lands which border on the Severn.
The newly crowned one was the only son
Of Teudric,—he who quitted throne and state,
And fair renown untarnished by defeat,
To live a hermit's life of prayer, and fasting,
In honour of the only Son of God.

And Bronwen, joyous at her lord's return,
The leader of so brave a following,
Had drest her house, and made herself as brave
To greet them; and there came a genial hour
Wherein the sports and jousts, by Mowric held,
Were played or fought anew, and we who listened
Made glad at heart to hear how Eurien ever
Had held that place in both to him belonging.

But Eurien careless of this wind blown praise,
As feeling that some seeds of deeper purpose
Bided within him but the turn of time
To show a worthier harvest, put aside
The theme, and asked his lady how the days

111

Had sped with her at Garth, her lord away.
Then Bronwen dropped her words into the pause
Which waited them, and said in ear of all
The silent household and the listening guests:

‘My lord, I have been comforted to hear
From noble lips, of honour you have won
Abroad, for by my troth of loyal lady
And loving wife,—albeit I blush to own it,—
You have been very foully shamed at home!’

Then silence deepened in the hall, unbroken
By Eurien even so much as by a word;
But there was burning question in his eyes,
And wrath concentred in the gathered limbs
So late relaxed in careless rest; and Bronwen
Went on as at his bidding, but her voice
Shook as she louder spoke to steady it.

‘We have been shamed, my lord, by Cynorac,
Who mocks at you for leaving of his trespass
So long unpunished. In the days gone by
He was content to rob your mother's lands

112

And mine, not then your wife, as now, but only
Your love; he, having proved your tireless patience,
Comes forward to a bolder tune, and beards you
Not from afar, through others, but in face,
As man to man. He chooses from your flocks,—
Your household flocks, not those which roam at large,
The one which most of all those flocks you cherish
For the fine wool wherewith you count in time
To profit our poor Glyneth;—takes the beasts
And judges them deliberately, selecting
With a slow care the finest ram and ewe,
And rides away with them in leash before him.’

Then the clenched hand of Eurien lighted down,
Amidst the platters on the oaken board,
And touching with his ring a crystal goblet
Laid it upon its base in glittering ruin.
And warning off pale Bronwen as she rose
To gather up the fragments, Eurien sate
Grasping his crispëd beard, his way in wrath,—
Withdrawn within himself, silently shaping
His purpose to the need of his displeasure.

113

But counsel came to him, and suddenly
He turned on Bronwen:

‘Who hath borne this tale?’
And she who loved to tread in crooked paths,
Yet seldom lied with lip, seemed forced to answer:
‘It came from Weroc,—wrought before his eyes.’
Then Eurien:

‘Tell to Weroc when you next
Have speech of him,—to Weroc, mischief-monger,—
Spinner of spiders' webs that fail to stay
Aught weightier than a gnat,—tell him I hold
His Cynorac so modest to have taken
One only pair of sheep from all my folds,
I straight shall send him six, and therewith chide him
That he accounted me so poor in grace
As to have stinted for his open asking.’

But Bronwen eyed her haughty lord askant,
And thought his pride became him well; albeit—
Holding his words no better than a boast—
She looked for likelier fruit of Weroc's cunning.
For Weroc was the thief who wore the cloak

114

Of Cynorac, whereof if Bronwen wist,
She held herself apart from open proof.

Next day at dawn the stranger knights rode forth,
And Eurien with them, through the fine, soft rain
That gemmed his hair and beard with thick-sewn beads
As diamonds golden-threaded; and he rode,
Speaking with bended head and lowered voice
To a grey knight of Mowric's, who was deep
In Mowric's council; and the talk was all
Of plots without and jealousies within,
And plans to bind our Cymri in one bond
Of brotherhood, to stem the tide of doom.

And bidding them God-speed, as from the sun
New-risen, shot a vague and watery gleam,
Lighting a new-born hope, pale as the dawn,
As sad and dubious, we two turned away,
And wending slowly homeward, Eurien looked
Round on the tearful land, wherefrom the mists
Were rising, gathered up like filmy scarves
In folds about the mountains' turbaned heads;

115

And tenderly his voice that stirred my heart
More than all other voices, being made
I think to wake a hidden soul of music
In wayside stones, gave forth a strain that bore
A sadness to his mien and words unknown;
He spoke in music only, and in music
My heart responded truly, tone for tone;
The burthen of his plaint was ‘Wales, wild Wales!’

And when his song was ended, Eurien turned not,
But spoke his heart, faintly, as in a dream:
‘Think you in truth that he,—our great Pendragon,—
Arthur, still lives in some high land of Faëry
Whence he may win to us, and with that brand
Men tell of, cleave the heart of Dynas-Emrys,
And mount the golden chair which Merlin guards
Within? What say you? will he once more gather
Our scattered Cymri in his kingly hands,
Bind them in one, and so compacted hurl them—
Hurl them against the Saxon that we back him,
Ay, back until we choke him in the sea?’

Then I Glân-Alarch, wakening to his voice:

116

‘Should our hearts’ longing so prevail on his,
That he for us will leave some further sphere,—
He being of those ripe souls who have o'ercome,—
Past nobly through the flesh,—but who return
For love of man, to run the course once more,—
Causing the level of the race to rise
By their sole presence as an inland sea
By the unsealëd heart of some high spring,—
If such pure sacrifice, of God allowed,
Be made by Arthur for his trampled Britons,
One thing is sure: our hope will be revealed
First in the forward ranks of marching men.’

And Eurien whose passion seemed to glow
And kindle into flame, although unfed
By Saxon outrage later than the slaughter
Of the twelve-hundred, struck his clenched right hand
Hard on his girdle, where the leaden ball
Lay, waiting to be launched; and as I looked
I felt a traitor ever to have deemed
It could beseem his cheek to show more pale.

He paused; then answering to his thought, resumed:

117

‘The life she bore, thrice over she had yielded,
So death that frees the soul should let it blow
The flame which kindled her in living fire
Through Cymric souls, to weld them into one!’

Then first I knew that she whose death had crowned
My cup of sorrows, lived in Eurien's heart,
Wherein mine own found comfort ever more,
Though all unwitting of the sweet encounter.

And eyeing him from 'neath my shaggy brows,—
Him, Eurien the golden, on whose person
The sunbeams loved to gather; he whose head
Now rayed with broken light from lip and crown,
Strong as a god's, was as a woman's fair,
Whose limbs in nature's finest mould were fashioned,
And cast in nature's most enduring metal,
Whose very garments, chosen for their fitness,
Became revealing, as the jewelled feathers
Of some rare bird proclaim the daintiness
Which rules its life,—I looked on him and sighed:
‘My son, an unthrift hand hath wrought these titles

118

Which have not won for thee the crown of love;
Nay more, whose very splendour was the blind
Which made you lose in youth the way of life.’

And musing thus, I thought how Eurien's youth
Was poorer than mine age; that golden Eurien
Might never hear the tale which now I heard
Blown by the trumpet of the honeysuckle
Across the vale of years,—blown strong and sweet,
Opening the long-closed, silent ways of life,—
Awakening dead regrets, and living hope.

So on we rode in silence, while the birds
Sung of the brightening promise of the day,
And shook the pendant drops from verdant eaves
Which sloped above their nests.

Then, when the valley
Widened, and laid its townships, hamlets, castles,
At Eurien's feet, he spake again; and thus:

‘We Cymri are as sheep that have no shepherd;
Mowric is leal, but as a wind-blown flame;—
A king of Glyneth, but no king of men.

119

What man if he should lift him to our head,
Could draw the scattered flock to follow him?’

I answered hotly:

‘Eurien is the man.’

He turned on me as never until now
In sudden wrath:

‘These be no words of wisdom
Worthy the sanction of a hoary crown;
'Tis Eurien you speak with,—not Brocmail!
Shall I as he, pricked by a vain ambition,
Open a way to Britain's bleeding heart,
Heedless of warning, anguish, ruth, and shame?’

And then more gently, having gathered patience
With age that was more rash than others' youth.

‘The chief of Snowdon owns a noble name,
And nobler that it hath been wisely borne;
But ‘Snowdon’ is no cry of leadership
That to the few bold bands we seek to train,
Could rally such a following as would quell

120

Long rooted hate, and smooth divided council.
Other than I must be the man whose head
Is consecrate to so supreme a task.
The sheen of youth, its boasts of strength and prowess,
Its craving need to be, and to possess,
Its hopes too high, its time too long to weave
And wear them in, are arguments wherefrom
Our jealous chiefs would gather harsh conclusions.
One now to lead our Cymri should be hoar
As wise with age; should be as God who gives,
Not man who grips. Grey Teudric, with his crown
Of power and meekness, had been he, if only
His heart when dead to self, had lived for Britain.
It was not so, and vengeance still must ripen.
Our way is dark, we know not where it leads us,
The road still narrows, while its side-paths close;
Hold the heart high, and keep the spirit pure,
Then, watchful and alert, come what come may,
We in the teeth of Fate shall still be men,—
E'en in the jaws of Fate as men would fall!
But, my Glân-Alarch, side not with the fiend
Who tempts me, and would tempt me with more power

121

But for a voice whose silence weights my thoughts,
And a lost presence mingled with my life.’

Then answerless, rebuked, with downcast looks
I rode by Eurien; but my heart beat high;
For truly as I think the proudest thing
That rears its head on earth, is love, and mine
For Eurien now was rampant in content.

Then silence fell again, until the towers
Of Garth rose up; when Eurien to me:
‘Our hands, Glân-Alarch, now are somewhat bare
Of fitting work; our levies broken loose,
Like water that the breath of spring unlocks,
Are spread abroad upon those summer fields
Their sweat makes fruitful; so these summer days
That had been short for work, are long for waiting.’

‘Ay, they are long,’ I said, ‘but there is still
The chase to keep the soldier's veins in health,
To exercise his arm, and teach him cunning.’

‘That game,’ quoth he, ‘I fear that we have played
With passion too prolonged; my hoped-for heir,

122

If we should keep this merry fashion going
As we have kept it, scarce would know the joy
Of saving his white flesh—it should be white,
His mother's is—from the still whiter fangs
The hungry wolf uncovers. We must leave
Some pickings from the feast of life for those
Who seat them at the board when we have done.’

I smiled that he was gay; I wished him troubled
At whiles when he was still, yet when his brow
Was dark, I seemed to lose my way of life.

I laughed: ‘We'll leave the lean and wiry wolf
To teach young Eurien, that is to be,
Our long endurance, when the brutish men
That were our masters shall be trodden under.
We who have learnt our lesson of the wolf,—
Learnt it too well as she you wot of told us—
We need not scorn to drink enlivening draughts
Of the sweet air in questing humbler game.
The bear would not more savagely defend
His hold than we these mountains from the hunters
Who hem us in; and now methinks we might
With profit learn some cunning of the creatures

123

Who make their wiles atone for lack of strength,
And in the padded steps e'en of the hare,—
Whose ears are funnels of all dangerous sound,—
Take counsel of her shifts, her craft, her doubles;
And, as all means are good that are well used,
Find in her oily course an argument
Wherewith to whet the temper of our spirit.
The rather would I that you should decline
Upon this lowlier sport, first, that you hold
Your life in fee for Cambria, secondly,
That herein old Glân-Alarch, your dumb bard,
May still be partner with you.’

Eurien spoke not;
His looks were set high o'er Y-Aran's summit,
Piercing the cloud beyond it; then he turned
And flashed on me, and all his soul I saw
Was stirred within him, as it came to meet
And hail me at the threshold of his eyes,
Ere yet mine own was waked with sudden clangour
Reverberate to the metal of his voice.

‘Now by my knighthood, and my hope of heaven,
No hare that hath her form on any hill

124

Or plain, or valley where my rule is known,
Shall ever flee me more, by me pursued!’
Then hurriedly:

‘A week agone we met,—
You were not of us—met upon the banks
Of Llyn-y-Gader; on the dewy ground
The scent was hot. Our game was promptly found,
And from the brake, the hare fled full in view,
And straightened from the first, as though she knew
Her race that day would be a race with death.
So past we on through unaccustomed glens,
And over mountain spurs, still calling up
Old echoes that had slept the summer long.
A robe of state had covered all the pack,
And still in view of men, and flying hounds,
And staring horses, sped the gallant hare,—
The fleeting fixture of a hundred eyes.
Her tale had had another end, I trow;
She would have perished at Lake Quellen's side,
If from the flanks of Moel-Ruth had come
No flock of mountain sheep to cross our path,
And let her glide unnoted in the rout
Into a bowery copse we left behind us.

125

Then it was good to see the baffled hounds
‘Cast’ themselves, sprinkled singly o'er the vale,
As a full shower of grain that leaves the hand
Of a skilled sower; and ere long the tongue
Of Chorister, that ne'er was known to lie,
Broke the still air, and every head was turned,
Retracing that same way by which we came.
So on past Llyn-y-Gader, in one burst
To where the Colwyn and blue waters meet,
Leaving Y-Aran, on past Dynas-Emrys
To Llyn-y-dinas, where the burning scent
Was quenched upon the water's edge. And here
I thought no wrong to help the eager brutes,
So wound my horn, and ‘lifted’ them to where
My human cunning told me that the game
Had landed. Then we hit the line again,
And all the narrowing vale was overflowed
With music which the mountain sides beat back,—
With music welling up from clarion throats,
Bursting as living springs of harmony,
Whose waves repelled, crossed clamorously, and made
An inland sea of turbulent sound, which maddened
The sense of all who heard it.

126

‘On we flew,
A lessening train, to right of Gwynant Lyn,
Over the bryn, past Hafod,—holm, and mere,—
On and still on, with neither halt nor check,
At blinding pace, meeting the treacherous wind
Which blew the secret of the hapless hare
Full in the faces of the pack; so on
Towards Pen-y-Gwryd, a still dwindling train
Of horsemen; only I and Wythan now
To take brook Teryn, and to find when landed
Upon its further side, the hounds at fault,
Scouring the widening valley, snuffing wildly
At tainted stems and herbage; whimpering
Of baffled rage.

‘Then, then Glân-Alarch mine,
I was no better than a beast myself;
The brute had broken loose in me, the lust
Of conquest grew with struggle; the frail thing
We hunted—crept for shelter 'neath a stone
That shelved above the brook—had from that covert,
Gathered within her timorous ear, the sharp,
Wild hue and cry of dogs and men, and trampling

127

Of steeds that plunged above her heavily,
Leaving her panting for the life scarce saved.

‘So round and round we flew, we, baffled beasts,
The dogs and I alone; for Wythan's horse
Grown wild, had made a stride too rash in leaping
The brook, and suffered hurt; then stealing forth
With gathered courage, I beheld the hare
Skimming the ground, unweaving for her part
Our desperate morning's work,—spinning her way
Backward through Gwynant vale. I blew my horn;
The maddened hounds pressed round me, fierce, redeyed,
With flapping tongues that hung like bloody banners,
And at my voice and gesture, flung themselves
Once more across the brook, and back we flew,
The savage pack in front, and I alone
Of all their morning's following, behind;
The valley full of discord, re-awakened,—
Their yelling tongues, and mine that cheered them on.

‘Glân-Alarch! From the side of Gant-y-Wennol,
Letting itself fall slowly, as a giant

128

Folding his arms round peaks and crags, might drop
From off a mountain's brow, there came a cloud,—
A tall, white cloud, which spread itself in mist,
Over the path we followed through the vale.

‘We gained upon the hare; again she broke
In sight of our pursuing eyes; we gained,
She lost with every stride; then in our path
She lay down spent; she yielded, poor dumb wretch,
But yielded to fierce foes who gave no quarter.
A moment, but a little moment more,
And she had perished, torn by ravening hounds,
Nor lived to ransom all her kind of me.
But lo, within the mist whereof we neared
The skirts, there stood revealëd now to view
A maiden, draped, and veiled in spotless white,—
A maid of stature tall, and vast of limb,
Beyond the wont of mortals; and she seemed
Of the white mist to be the whiter core.

‘Ah then, Glân-Alarch mine, a weird, a wonder,
Grew up before my eyes; this stately virgin,
This maiden of the mist, spread her fair arms,

129

And into them, half dead, our victim sprung,—
Sprung with an impulse of expiring nature,—
And panting on a heart that seemed the home
Of all the charities, closed her faint eyes,
And drooped her head in sweet abandonment,
And utter joy of safety, and of rest.

‘Then the fierce pack that would not be denied,
Swept after her, and clove the silvery mist,—
A serried body, reeking bloody hate,—
And would I think have snatched the creature forth,
E'en from the haven of those nursing arms.
But lo, another wonder. At the foot
Of that strange presence white and cold, they fell,—
The savage yelping beasts with fiery eyes,—
They fell,—their tongues subdued to tremulous sounds,
Tamed in a moment, as by some great joy,—
Fell whimpering, abject, licking her pale feet,
And, fawning in the dust, they lay there grovelling
As they would bore their graves, and hide them in it.

‘I saw no more; shame blinded me. I fell,
I too, upon my knees, and could have buried
My shamëd manhood in the dust with them.

130

When next I looked, the mist had grown a cloud
More dense and white than at its first descent
From Wennoll, and from forth of it, the hounds
Trailed themselves one by one, and dropped about me
Resting on trembling haunches, while they met
My glance with such confused and conscious looks
As suit conspirers in some deed of ill.

‘But now the greatest wonder, and the last.
The cloud moved slowly on towards Gwynant lake,
Then spread itself abroad again in mist,
And not the faintest film of human form
Remained within it;—maid, and hare were gone.
Glân-Alarch, I am not as thou, a seer,
So have not learnt to doubt the tale mine eyes
May tell, or hold it over-true to be
The common showing of a world of shows.
That which my sense has pictured, I have taken
As the true message of a trusted servant,
No more;—but this, what shall I say of this?
Believe me I had counted it a dream
If its beginning had not had firm proof;—
For look you—’

131

Eurien's voice grew faint with awe
And breathed its burthen closer in my ear,—
‘That maiden of the mist, that high white spirit
Which for a moment to my spirit became
As palpable, was Mona! By her arm,
Waving its queenly bidding to the hounds,
I knew her, as they knew her; oh, Glân-Alarch,
Her love was great, it will not have me shame it,
Her love was high, and will not let me fall,
I too Glân-Alarch, I arose that day
From out the dust where I had fallen, and left
My baser part in it; with sterner sense
Of manhood in me, then I swore to give
My undivided strength, to “Wales, wild Wales!”’

‘Wales, Wales, wild Wales, and Eurien for Wales!’
I echoed, and the breeze that brushed my beard
Prolonged the cry, and all the air seemed stirring
With voices as a chorus swelling it.

Then ‘Wales, wild Wales, and Eurien but for Wales!’
He answered me; and we two side by side
Rode in white heat of passion, pale as wraiths.

132

The harvest time was come again, and seed
Sown in a tearful spring, was reaped in joy
Of autumn sunshine broadening on full fields.
And when the sickle eased the groaning earth,
And the fair fruit of all its toil, was laid
In sheaves upon its breast, then Bronwen held
Within her arms a separate life, and paused
A moment from her own, to dwell with it
On the still border-land of infancy,
In careless rest of innocence, and peace.

And Eurien's eyes that looked upon his son,—
Albeit in manhood's early prime, their light
Was dimmed by shadows of the past, and doubts
Veiling the threatening future,—filled with joy
Unreasoning as the love which gives it birth:
Joy that a man is born into the world,—
The bitter, weary, dubious world,—and love
That still should quell, and still creates such joy.
But joy and love were brooding in the silence
Which wrapped the young child's life; and where love dwells
There faith and hope, her sisters twain, will come

133

And show themselves, if only in our dreams.
Wherefore the child of Eurien, born to see
The rise or fall of many Cymric hopes,
The rise or fall may be of Cymric life,
Was welcomed as an unblown flower of time,
By hearts all reverent of its mystery.

The silence passed; from out it came a stir,
A glad new motion in our daily lives.
Long-silent birds gushed forth in sudden song,
As if in memory of their summer joys;
The grey old towers and mouldering stones of Garth
Grew warm in the embraces of the sun,
And quickened with their warmth the Roman vines,
Whose bunches overflowing, brought a gay
Barbed throng to tap their wine to drowsy music.
And louder than the drone of armed marauders
Among the flushing vines of Garth-y-Gwin,
More merry than the lated joy of birds,
That sung the dying splendours of the woods,
There rose from out the valley, sounds of labour
Nearing its recompense; of men and maids—
Their voices joined in laughter or in song

134

Because—nay, never seek a cause for joy!
No flower that blows but somewhere had a root;
Enough for simple hearts that Garth rejoiced
For birth, the ripe, soon o'er-ripe year, for death.

High festival was held again by Eurien
In honour of the twofold joy; the harvest
More fruitful than our fields for many a year
Had yielded to our cares, and the young life
Which showed yet fairer-fruited in our dreams.

The banks of Colwyn, newly shorn, were gay
With mounted knights and dames, bedecked like flowers;
With banners floating on the breeze, and hauberk
And lance that shone like dew-drops hung upon them.
To one who watched them from the towers of Garth,
These coming guests, backed by the tawny stubble,
Were moving pictures, by a cunning hand,
Set in a field of gold; and as they came,
The broken music of the river rose
And fell to other sounds than churlish glee,
Or changes of grave words whereof the oxen
Partook their share, and showed their equal sense.

135

Anon the flourish of a horn would startle
The echoes of our hills, and set them leaping
As airy giants over rock and chasm;
Or snatch of some gay song, or minstrel harp
Would light the darkened passage of a wood,
Or guide the eye to some untrodden path
Betwixt the mountains, where the unseen guest
Wound his wild way at Eurien's gracious bidding.

And to this feast of baptism and of harvest,
They who were summoned were of all degrees;
Mowric was there, Glamorgan's silken chief,
With many a thane, and many a belted knight,
Wearers of torque and bracelet, squire and page;
And therewith many a dame, in fairer field
As potent as the lord who was her liege;
These, and the followers of their high estate
Had greeting as their worth; nor was there stint
Of welcome for the men whose honest hands,
Wearing no gloves of steel, were rough and horny,—
Poor soldiers battling with brute elements,
Whose daily conquests won no meed of praise.
These ran and wrestled; haply lost and laughed,

136

Giving their bodies up to merry scorn
In feats impossible; or watched the great ones
Who proved the keen delight of warlike contest,
The keenest edge of danger dulled.

The lists
Were set within a long-disusëd court;
'Twas Eurien's eye adjudged the space well levelled;
His hand assigned their places to the judges;
His spirit, fed in childhood by the tales
Of that high table-land of honour, dear
To men of Arthur's court, it was that kindled
Us all, till at his fire we too took flame,
And treading in those reverend steps, we felt
Our office priestly to some sacred rite.

No knight of Arthur's court, nay, not its head—
The ‘blameless king’—I speak it reverently—
For pure is pure and knows of no degree,—
Could own a motive freer from all stain
Of baser self, than that which urged our chief
To gather thus the chivalry of Britain
And forge in casual fellowship, firm links
To bind its limbs as in one coat of mail.

137

The prize our chieftain chose from out the treasures
Which time had gathered in our house of Garth,
Was one well made to shine in lady's eyes,
And be the gage of beauty and of might.
A chaplet all of orphrey, finely wrought,
The work of Roman hand, with, in its midst,
As mete to be the shield of some fair front,
A dome of sapphires, dark as midnight sky,
But lighted at its heart by one vast pearl,
Resplendent as the moon which follows harvest.
Men say the fatal beauty of this gem,—
The fairest ever found in British waters,—
Cost us our sovereignty, when, in a ring
It pass'd as love-gage from a British maiden
To one who bore it with him o'er the seas,
And made with it his boast. Its modest light,
Serene as virtue's self, meeting the eye
Of him who was the tyrant then of Rome,
Kindled the lust and greed that slept within it,
And sent him from his palaces of pride
To rifle for their pearls our sea-worn sands.

This precious token then, of his great heart

138

Our chieftain brought, and lifted up on high
Where all might see the prize which skill and valour
Might win for beauty. As the sapphires glowed
Around the mild, white radiance of the pearl,
The chaplet was the lure of every eye;
Knights felt their courage rise, and dames their zest
To watch the combat, quicken at the sight.

Only one lady,—she whose brow was crowned
E'en as the Roman conqueror's,—beheld it
With eyes that had the greed importunate
Of his. That one was Bronwen, whom all voices
Had lifted to the throne, set in the midst
For regal beauty. Looking on the chaplet
Her lighter crown, grew light in her esteem,
And in her breast a sullen sense of wrong
Rose up, for that her having in this jewel—
A thing she felt her own by every title,—
Should run the chances of a warlike game,
Or mere caprice of knightly courtesy.

On the one side our knights of Snowdon fought,
Led by Garth's golden eagle, on the other

139

The stranger knights with Mowric at their head.
They strove all day, with ever-changing fortune,
And at the end, when shrilling trumpets sounded
And marshals of the court broke up the lists,
The prize was still unwon.

Then Bronwen felt
It hard to wear her smiles, and keep her cheer,
Yet only said in passing night to Eurien,—
Said to her maidens with a silvered laugh
Which just betrayed a steely edge:

‘Dear ladies
If we to-morrow would not see our knights
Betray our cause as eke they have to-day,
'Twere best we bade them seek a ruder captain.’

The taunt,—the first that ever touched the sheen
Of Eurien's honour, fell beside it harmless;
He all unwitting of the poisoned sting,
Even as a child that has no skill in danger
Doubts not the coated venom of the wasp.

The evening wore away, and half the night
In song and revel; in all forms of feasting,

140

And moods of mirth; but when the morrow came,
The words were few, and they were feebly heard
For clank of arms and hoofs, for champ of bits,
And neigh of chargers, eager as their lords
To prove their mettle. Pennons waved i' the wind,
The lists were cleared, the judges set, the marshals
And broidered heralds glowing in their places;
The ladies shining with a softer radiance,
All but one star who led the galaxy,
Proud Bron wen, she who, girded in her robe
Of gold and grain, that changed to dusky green,
With shining bars of black that with each motion
Of the fair shape within, broke into waves
Which trembled on the beauty that they lapped,—
Seemed to an eye whence years had filched the fire,
A snake-like, burnished creature of the dust.

Then Eurien raised again, high on the staff
Within the ken of all, the costly prize
As yet unwon; and laughing lips declared
The pearl had grown in darkness of the night.

They strove from morn till noon, as yesterday,
While Fortune seemed to mock each side in turn,—

141

Freakish as were the glimpses of the sun,
Which shot at us betwixt the travelling clouds.
An hour for baiting man and horse scarce taken
At noon, the thunder of the charge set in,
The lightning of the clashing steel flashed forth
Anew. The bray of trumpets stirred the spirits,
And knight and charger, hard to be restrained
Stood trembling in the ranks on either side
Waiting the signal. Eurien's eye was burning,
His brow flushed, even to the shores whence set
The wavelets of his yellow hair, his voice
Cheering his knights of Snowdon when the thrust
Of lance, or stroke of sword went fully home,
Rung o'er the warlike din reverberate,
And set his horse curvetting, flinging foam
From the champed bit, from his red nostril smoke,
And glare of baffled courage from his eye.
For Eurien's hand that moved not, yet was closed
So hard upon the reins, his glove of steel,
Pressed deep into his flesh, the while he held
His charger back, himself aloof from praise,—
That meed too wildly coveted, which else
Too lightly he had won, and paid too dear.

142

I grew impatient then as Eurien's horse,
Irate as Eurien's wife, when suddenly
The chafing beast set free, rushed like a greyhound
Loosed from the slips, and with his weight impetuous
Staggered in mid career the heavy onslaught
Of a grim knight, about to charge on Wythan,
Ere yet his hands were freed, the overthrow
Of a sworn freer. Our chieftain's fiery valour
Made silence for a moment round the twain;
Sparks flashed from targe and helm as though his strokes
Were wrought upon an anvil; so he kept
The knight at bay till Wythan claimed his own.

Then from the watchful throng of stranger knights
Rode one whose subtle tongue gained him the ear
Of Mowric, one who knew full well the weight
Of Eurien's thrust, but thought to tempt his stars
This day which seemed propitious. In his eye
There lurked such hatred as hard lessons leave
In churlish minds. They met, and with the fortune
Iölyn—so men call him—should have known.
Our chieftain's hand, grown hot upon the work,

143

And somewhat feverish from its long constraint,
Splintered the braggart's lance in the first charge,
And ere his seat was righted, struck the crest
Sheer from his helm; which, falling to the ground,
Was trodden by the horses as in scorn.

At this there rose from out a group of pages
The tinkle of light laughter, led by Poplet,—
Here with his stranger lord,—and soon repressed,
But urging first Iölyn's wrath to fury.

Charge upon charge they met, our chieftain holding
His own;—'twas hard for him to win and hold
No more, and so angry were the eyes that glared
From out the plated steel, so rude the hand
Aiming to reach his face, which in fine scorn
Of that he deemed too fair, he ever left
Unguarded, e'en in deadliest heat of war.
When Eurien bore his foe to earth unhorsed,
He lighted down beside him, and the twain
Fought hand to hand, which while the quickset hedge
Of eyes that watched the lists grew fixed and fierce.
Our chieftain's cunning hand prolonged the game,
And dallied with his mad opponent, warding,

144

Or dealing cut and thrust with such nice sense
Of weight, as one well-skilled upon the harp
Might use in playing it, yet from its strings
Shake out the inmost tone that spared their life.

But when at last the knight lay, back to earth,
His vain heart panting heavily beneath
The bended knee descending on its throbs,
Then Eurien caught that baleful gleam of malice
Hot from the eyes of Mowric's trusted servant,
And swift as light, he loosed his hold, and leaving
His sword within Iölyn's struggling hand,
Sprung back, and fell before him, as if smitten
With sudden blow or pang; whereon Iölyn
Rose up astonished to astonished eyes,
Waving a sword above a prostrate body,—
A victor in the long unequal strife.

My eyes were blind with rage, I only heard
A shout go up to hail the victor's triumph,—
That triumph which my chieftain's heart disdained,
Or, not disdaining, threw away, as one
Who trims his vessel for some mighty storm,

145

May throw vain splendours to the howling waves
Whereon dark Moel-Hebog answered back,
As ever to all words proclaimed at Garth,
And seemed to shake its sides with giant laughter.

Then Eurien, he too rose, but faint and giddy,
Striking his foot upon the earth, to feel
After the ebbing strength which one dire moment
Had overthrown; then went, a luckless knight,—
He, golden Eurien,—on his way, and bent
Lowly before the ladies with sad eyes,
And parted silent lips, and came to Bronwen
And whispered her:

‘Wife, you as I, your knight,
Will joy to lose some barren show of honour
Laying it down in tribute to the cause
We live for.’

Then he stood beside her pale
As lead, with on his brow the clustering curls
Like draggled sheaves the hail had beaten down
Dank, clinging in the sweat of that ere now
Untasted anguish; but her gaze was set
Above his head, hard on the pearl within

146

The sapphire dome, which seemed to loom more large
From further distance. Then with drooping glance
She swept his pallid face, which forthwith reddened
As if beneath a blow, and turned her own
With all its smiles and favour, and the light—
If light could live within her darkened eyes—
Full on Iölyn.

Then my chieftain, you
Who were to me as son, ay, son and father,
Son, for you were the branch whereon my hopes
Were sheathed, and father that I owed you more than life,—
I could at this have seized my harp, and sung,
And sung tempestuously your foregone praise,
Breaking my vow of silence; but I laid
Mine unsung song, as you your unwon crown,
Low on that altar where our best was due.

And other some there were whose eyes were used
To glance from you, as birds of twilight spare
To meet the sun in face, who unabashed
Now eyed your brow unfilleted, though touched
With such a grace as mocked the victor's crown,

147

And would have made my words, though they had burst
In passion's finest frenzy from my lips,
No better than a goblet's empty ring.

Some scorn there was, and some disdainful pity
In that long gaze of Eurien which sounded
The shallow soul with which his own was mated:
The soul of that wise woman who knew glory
Only by name, and would have looked askance
At Jesu's crown of thorn,—accounting it
No better than a badge of common shame.

There be some women, women woman-hearted,
Whose hearts had died, slow withering, in the blight
Of gaze so piteous, and of such proud pity;
For her, she only reared her head, and raised
Her hand to settle in its place, her poor
Vain crown of beauty which had bowed to meet
The helm of that false victor; and with smiles
Still lingering when their duty had been done,
Gazed loftily around in low content.

148

Then Eurien put the bitter thoughts aside
With the sweet mead in the untasted cup
A hand had lifted to his saddle-bow,
And threaded with his glance the moving crowd
If haply he might find the fiery beard,
The blood-charged eyes, straight brows, and mighty chest
Crossed by the braceletted long arms of Cynorac.
For he, too, had been bidden to the feast
And tourney, by the hand which bore from Eurien
His present of the ewes; he was not there,
The friendly bidding seemingly was scorned,
The hind detained;—but that was yet to see.

And knight still challenged knight, as the fierce game
Raged on; but I had seen too much, and wearied
To get above the din; so set my face
And toiling steps to reach the mountain's brow.

Grey towers of Garth-y-Gwin that showed so fair
From thence! Old eyrie of our chieftain's race,—
A race of eaglets who had seen the world

149

Beneath their feet for ages, but had scorned
To brush the dust or mire from off fat plains,
And left them to the velvet clutch of owls.
There looking down upon the plumes that flashed
And whirled about us borne upon the wind,
Seeing the streaming, blood-red flags, and housings
Torn and bestrewing with their crimson shreds
The ground from which the dust went up like smoke,
Methought that ancient eyrie seemed to-day
The scene of some dread battle of the birds.
And from the dust, and through the rarer air,
The sound of ringing hoofs, the heavy thud
Of meeting bodies, and the clash of steel,
With cries and shouts or groans of partisans,
Came mingled with the bray of the big words
By heralds trumpeted,—whose meaning often
The syllables that dropped upon the way
Made mock of,—and got tangled in my thoughts
With sports of other days, and dead bright eyes,
And softened with the tuneful toil of bees
At work to plenish Bronwen's winter stores
With honey from the fading heather blooms,
And guarded gorse, whose flower like human love

150

Knows nought of seasons, or defies their rigour.
Then suddenly above the droning bees
And murmurous past, there rose a cheer wherein
The youthful ring of Wythan's voice was clearest;
So knew I that our gallant knights of Snowdon
Had guarded well the treasure of our house,
And that our pearl remained the pride of Garth.

I hastened down the mountain; from our beeches
The squirrels had been scared, but silently,
Coming from time to time I saw not whence,
To vanish like a guilty, furtive thing,
There wheeled a bird with dusk, broad pinions spread,
And burning eyes fixed keenly on the crowd
Whose voices took a harsher edge, as thirst
Was fired with deeper draughts.

Alas, the bustards,
And very carrion crows had come to know
The bloody lapses of our Cymric sport.

Yet still the horns went round, and still the laugh
Grew wilder, when not quelled by deep-voiced oaths,—

151

Retorts of charges fierce or querulous;
Till Eurien, troubled at the rising tumult,
Took from a page's hand a brimming beaker,
And riding to the midst, he poured it forth
On the hot stones wherefrom it rose in steam,
And lifting clear above the muddy waves
Of sound, the matchless music of his voice,
He, singing as it were unto himself,
Rid slowly through the court; the song he sung
Was Bard Aneurin's song of Cateraeth,—
That battle lost to Britons through the bees;—
He sung, and silence grew about his steps,
And the sad echoes whispered the refrain:
‘Pale mead, that was their drink, became their poison!’

Then many a fevered hand that late had vexed
A charger's fretted mouth, or clutched a weapon
In grip too deadly, closed in fellowship
As sudden as its owner's foregone ire;
And many an eye that had been stern with doubt
Grew soft beneath a mist which seemed to rise
As from the common tears of a doomed race.

152

Ere long the lists were closed; the heralds sounded
The signal that the busy day was done;
And fluttering lawn, and silk of many dies,
Enwoven in new waves of harmony,
Past from the galleries, and left them bare
Of beauty; while the mail-clad knights and squires
Heavily lounging on their weary steeds,
Besieged the issues of the court, in haste
To be refreshed with change of suit, and rest.

Then when the last armed tread that sought a place
Within the castle walls, had died away,
And waiting varlets leading to their stalls
The slow paced chargers, left the court to silence,
There rose through the thin air, and rose so high
It might have been a message for the moon,
The hymn that told how in the granaries
Of Garth, the harvest of the year was housed.

And suddenly the castle grew alive
With faces ruddy in the evening light,
Brightening each outlet, and with hands that waved

153

Kerchiefs at loop and lancet, and with lungs
That helped the note of triumph; then the voices
Died out, and silence to my sense became
As audible in the air that was a-quiver
With chirp of crickets in the tawny grass,
Or steadied for a moment by a gush
Of greeting from some late-returning bird,
Or cooled and sweetened with the plash of water,
Or babble of young voices 'neath the beeches,
That, in the overflowing of our halls,
Became the tiring-room of page and squire.

Bright over all the quaint shows of the feast
Had slanted, when the guests were marshalled first,
The low red sun, whose fiery oriflamme,—
Like a false herald setting gules on gules,—
Struck upon Ruval's beard, which thus beset,
Gave back so bold a challenge to the eye,
That Eurien rising up in joyful welcome,
Had half let fall the name of ‘Cynorac!’
Ere Ruval's friendly glance spoke him denial.

And they on whom the parting sun had shone

154

Sate on when shadows deepened on the daïs,
And knights and dames grew pale betwixt two lights,
While the spent beams still brushed familiarly,
As with a farewell token, the flushed cheek
Of harvestman or maid; and still sate on,
Laughing a little lower it may be,
And drinking somewhat deeper, when the sad
Last ashen pallor told the death of day.
Then argent beams from the triumphant moon
Prevailed through door and oriel, and were met
By fitful glare of torches; and they sate,
Sate still and feasted, sate and laughed and sung,
And sung and quaffed, and wore the night away.
When my wreathed harp at Eurien's later bidding
Was brought to me, I took it tenderly,
And held awhile ere passing it to Wythan;
Yet as it left my grasp, a sigh broke forth
Responsive to a touch, and all my being
Was shaken as a lover's, who expecting
No boon of love, unwittingly has come
In casual contact with his lady's hand.
Then the youth took my harp and woke its chords
What while I listened, trembling and half wroth

155

That this mine harp should answer any call
But that which left it still to silent shame.
He touched it softly, and it liked me well
To hear how mournful a return it made;
And then he sang, a song of little mirth,
For which his tuneful voice won willing hearing.

I spur all day from dawn till dark,
I follow a phantom pale,
And often I outrise the lark,
Out-watch the nightingale;
But whether I lie by a cool sweet spring,
Or ride on a burning quest,
A voice in mine ear still murmuring,
Forbears me of my rest.

She haunts the sunshine, haunts the shade,
The mountain, and the stream,
And I know not whether she be a maid,
Or only a young man's dream;
But my soul grows white in her lovely light,
And my life so richly blest,—
God wot if it better becomes a knight
To possess or be possest.

A silence fell, the while from hand to hand
My harp was past, still past, abiding nowhere,
Till Ruval seized it in a grasp familiar,

156

And rose and smiled a truce to knights and dames,
The temper of whose mirth had met rebuff;
Then set his face to where the harvest folk—
Sunk in the silence of their grave repletion,—
Bent open-eyed and eared, haply to pick
From lordly droppings crumbs of lighter cheer.
A timelier song than Wythan's, Ruval's woke
A heartier echo; one of unknown love
Had sung in unknown tongue; the other told
A tale of cut and thrust, and wisely spake
In harvest-time of harvest. This his lay.

The table of the earth was spread,
Her sheaves were all a-glow,
The sun was laughing overhead,
The reapers wrought below;
All of a row those reapers ten
Had stood since dewy morn,
And bowed the head, ten brawny men,
Above the bended corn.

The table of the earth was spread,
And jocund was the feast,
For man there was good store of bread,
Of fodder for the beast;
At noon those merry reapers ten
Past round the foaming horn,
And laughed and quaffed, brown bearded men,
Among the bearded corn.

157

The table of the earth is spread,
The corn-crake gleans the floor,
The lark falls silent as the dead,
The laugh rings out no more;
And side by side those reapers ten,
Upon the field new-shorn,
Fall drowned in sleep, ten drowsy men,
Like poppies in the corn.

The mountain herds have ceased to graze,
Still fall the forest leaves,
But sudden motion bends and sways
A dozen golden sheaves;
And forth there step twelve armëd men,
Of Saxon mothers born;
Now God protect those reapers ten
Asleep among the corn.

The murderous Sassenachs they creep,—
Start, turn in craven fear!
A faithful dog but gives to sleep
One eye, and half an ear;
Black Mervyn wakes those reapers ten;
They rise with strength new-born,
They rise and thresh those Saxon men
Before they reap their corn.

Some voices from the topmost table caught
The tag, and sent it floating down the hall,

158

When tributary echoes hurried in
And made a roystering chorus.

When it ceased,
Voices of speech, not song, rose at the door;
One voice in hoarse complaint of barred admittance,
Striving and beaten back by the harsh tones
Of Rhun, our warder, grating as his keys,
And by the shrill and chirping insolence
Of pages, prodigal of borrowed power.

Then Eurien, whose glance had turned as often
As any shadow played about the portal,
Rose up, and stood with eager face attentive,
Flushed with a generous hope, and looking welcome.
I rose with Eurien, sharing Eurien's hope;
My portion died that moment it was born;
The lady Bronwen, seated by our chief,
And toying with her bracelet, looked athwart him,
Threading through interposing shapes of men
And chattels, till her gaze which was as fine
As sharpest needle-point, had seemed to prick
The wolfish hide of Weroc; for he turned

159

And met it; whereupon a sudden spark
Flashed from the contact, as when steel meets flint.

Then knew I that nor peace nor truce with Cynorac
Would come to crown our festival this day.

Our chieftain, in whose breast the hope had died
Less violently, raised his voice, and quelled
The tumult; then, with favour of his guests,
Forbade that any having claim on him,—
Seeking for council or redress from wrong,—
Should, feast or fast-day, be denied his face.

So from the open door the underlings
Fell back, and straight from out the silver night
The moonbeams seemed to swim into the hall,
Borne on the stooping shoulders of a hind,
And caught upon the fleecy carcases
Of two fair mountain sheep with blood besprinkled,
Slaughtered by hands unskilled, tied by their tails,
And rudely spiked upon an up-turned harrow,
Whereto the bearer of our chieftain's gift
To Cynorac, like a beast of draught, was yoked.

160

A silence fell upon our feast; the guests
Both high and low, the haughty, loud, or dull,
Where hushed in sudden brotherhood of shame.

Wythan and Ruval, Caradoc and Gryffyth,
Sprung to their feet; we Cymri, we are quick,
Ay, quick to know and feel, and rash to act;
A word or look from Eurien had sent them
Panting o'er narrow mountain paths, with swords
Drawn ready for the thrust which should have found
Their sheaths ere dawn in Cynorac's churlish heart.

But Eurien on whose brow one while had glowed
A spot as if a burn had left its wheal,
Now showed a face grown cold, and stern, and white,—
Oh, whiter than the moonlight which it seemed
Had clomb to reach it as its highest mark,—
Eurien stood still, and gave no sign for action,
Nay, seemed to tame their choler with his hand
The while he struggled with his own, or took
Counsel with knighthood how it best might strike.

Then we who knew our chieftain's wont in wrath,

161

How quick to break its bounds, and to run over,—
As might a three parts plenished cup,—in foam,
Saw in this sullen continence of ire,
This stedfastness of muscle and of mien,
This wary handling of the draught full-charged,
The token of its deadlier quality.

And I, who knew that poison had been dropped
Into his wholesome blood by one whose part
Had been yet more to sweeten it, had nought
To urge but words which would have murdered peace
And so I swallowed them with silent curses.

And Bronwen, ever plucking at her bracelet,
Sent furtive glances out to glean the news,
Now here, now there about the hall, which keeping
Below the mark of Eurien's eyes, one moment
Encountered mine; whereon with a slow smile,
Secure in insolence of conquering cunning,
She sent them back their challenge.

All this while
The groaning shepherd, who had dragged his burthen
To Eurien's feet, and fallen prone before him,

162

Like an o'erladen beast, was lifting up
His voice in lamentation of his hurts,
His bruises, weariness, and stripes withal.
And Eurien then, in whom the tide of life
Began again to flow in wonted channels,
Took from the board a weighty silver goblet,
And filled it to the brim with generous wine,
Then gave it to the hind, and bade him quell
His overflowing sighs and words therewith.

Then Eurien: ‘We as yet but guess this riddle,
Which savours of the mood of Cynorac;
If he hath pointed his blunt wit with words,
Or sent a key to help our own, speak out;
Spare us the need to give it edge, or force it!’

So urged the varlet spoke, and truly spoke
All he might truly know; told how he came,
Bearer of Eurien's present of the sheep,
And Eurien's words of open heart, and told
How Cynorac had scoffed at both, but most
At Eurien's friendly bidding to the feast.
Then proud to think his tongue had found the way

163

To ears be-dulled for him by golden torques,
The fool spun o'er and o'er, and round and round
The taunting words of Cynorac; mumbling still:
‘“I marvel not,”—his very words my liege—
Lord Eurien seeks to have me eat his salt;
Your salt when eaten by a lusty foe
Is a rare physic for an ailing liver.”
“An ailing liver,” quotha; sooth, my lord,
I mind his words, for there is rank offence
In such for one who hath the wit to take it.
And then he fell a-foul o' the poor sheep,
Saying he had no mind to them, and swearing
That else he had been bold to help himself,
And waited no man's bidding; then he up
And slew them—not in such wise as becomes
A man to slaughter beasts, but vengefully,
Vilely, as if the creatures had been men.
Which done he bad his people dig a trench
And haul them in; and, quotha, with a laugh,
“Go tell your lord his beasts had Christian burial!”
But ere his knaves had settled to their work,
He changed his mind, and where I trembling stood,
Commanded they should seize and harness me,

164

Yoking me to the harrow and these twain
As one might tie a clout behind a dog;
And then the gang with curses and with blows
Set on to drive me up the pass, and Cynorac
Before I started shouted:

“Tell your lord
To cook his sheep and serve them at his feast;
I'll warrant them the tenderer for their trip.
And haply,” quotha, “he will send thee back,
So full of gentleness he late hath grown,
With thanks that I have made myself his butcher!”
So with fierce laughter, and still fiercer cudgels
Behind me, over hill and dale I come,
And fall a bag of bruises at your foot
With scarce the breath to bear his scurvy message.’

This while, like horses scenting from afar
The battle, our bold knights and squires, were fretting
And chafing in their places, barely held
By courtesy from rising in a troop;
And many a muttered oath and wrathful gesture
Had broken on this speech. But one there was
Who, bending to the tale an ear attent,
Smiled as a ‘Maker’ smiles, hearing his ode

165

Rehearsed to chosen audience; it was Weroc,
Whose damnëd leer betrayed the artist's joy!

Then Eurien, who now held his mood in hand,
And tamed it with some pride in its subjection,
Commanded that the hind should straight be freed,
Set on his feet, have all meet tendance given
To his complaints; and when he rendered back
The cup, our chieftain filled it yet again,
And bade him bear it with him as his pay;
‘Sell it for salve,’ he said, ‘to heal thy sores.’
Which done he prayed the pardon of his guests
That note so rude had come to mar their music;
Bidding fair ladies call the flying colours
Back to their cheeks, and not betray the cause
Of joy and peace whereto they all had met.
And then he ordered forth the deep blue Hîrlas,
And bending low to Mowric, drained the whole;
Then sent it on its course a-down the board,
And turned to Bronwen, laughing, rallying her,
That she, his wife, a mountain chieftain's dame,
Who should ere this be free of their wild hills,
And all the sudden changes of their skies,

166

Should own her spirits dashed because, forsooth,
The summery breath sent forth by him, returned
In the rough hail of a tempestuous joke.
Then Bronwen looked a moment in his face,
And triumph deepened on her own, as smiling
She strove with him to set once more adrift
The stagnant talk, and call back vanished mirth
To ring its merry changes in their words.
So singly, cautiously, as huts are seen
To rise upon a mountain's blackened side,
Which fire, that may return ere long, hath swept
Bare of all life, came at our chief's command,
The word, the laugh, the jest, but empty all,—
Mere habitations of our scattered spirits.
Our chieftain in a voice that had too much
The ring of steel in every note of it,
Called on his guests to drink and sing; they drank,
But song was scared; they drank, but did not sing.

Then at a sign from Bronwen, Dafyth's harp
Leapt with a shriek as of a mountebank

167

That tumbles at a fair, into our midst;
And all the jarring elements at strife
Within the hall,—the smouldering rage pent up,
The smiling treachery, the hollow mirth,
The tongue-tied honesty, the baffled hope,
Seemed to commingle in a hurricane
Of ribald sound, wherein at last the note
Of a base triumph, a lewd merriment,
Wanton, exultant, dominated all.

Well for the varlet that his throat was hoarse,
His mind as barren of all thought, but greed,
And sympathy with cunning, as the owl's;
Had his low triumph taken voice in words,
There haply had been found a hand to turn
A key upon them; tho' the lock were death.

But peace; the tongues were loosed again, the voices,
In high dispute with Dafyth's demon harp,
Rose as it rose, commingling in the strife,
And shapes of knights and ladies on the daïs—
Swayed to and fro with running talk—were glowing

168

With ruddy fire of torches, while the beams
Of the white moon surged up to them, and made
Our hall, which was the battle-plain of thoughts
And sounds discordant, to my vision seem,
The meeting-place of light from heaven and hell.

Then straight on me, Glân-Alarch, came the mood
Wherein God's secrets open to my spirit;
Wherein I see within, beyond mine eyes;
Wherein the cries of meeting matter leave
My ears impervious, while the immanent life
Which burgeons in the buds of spring, which rises
And swells within the wheat, which bursts in blessing
From ripened fruits, and breaks in rhapsody
Of perfect love from love-made-perfect flowers,
Flows into me, holds converse with my soul,
Reveals me to myself but as the glass
Wherein God's thoughts grow visible, the harp
His breathings trouble into melting music;
Then haply leaves me as the gleam goes by
Some seed of light for pregnant thought to clothe
In images of sense, which then I make
To serve his need for whom I hold my life.

169

So, with the twanging of the harp, and voices
Still mutinous about me, there dropped down
Betwixt us, as the curtains of a tent
Which shut them from my view; and I sate still,—
Still in their midst as in an isle of silence,—
While shapes of unrelated men and women
Grew to be hollow outlines, ere they vanished
As phantoms wholly, leaving me alone
With Eurien, and with Bronwen, and one other
Who came among us,—nay, how there I asked not,
Borne on a wave of moonlight as it seemed,—
And stood inclined towards us, with her arms
At rest upon the board, her face uplifted
Gazing in Eurien's eyes that saw her not,
With love and pity at their highest flood,
Drowning her own.

Then knew I she was come
God-sent to speed the battle for a soul
Against the powers of Cythraul, and my heart
Grew pure of hate and fear in looking on her—
God's minister, free of the gate of death,
God's maiden soldier, who was panoplied

170

In purity alone, bearing no weapon
Saving her tempered sword of virgin love.

And Eurien, for whose eyes the vision was not,
Spoke with the phantom shapes on either hand;
But under cover of this shadowy talk
I saw his spirit labouring to work
Its own confusion; saw the beckoning hand
Wherewith he summoned Wythan; heard the words
Of deadly meaning leave his guarded lips,
And knew that vengeance which a year agone
Was buried in our lost one's unknown grave,
Was now conjured to rise, a shapeless horror,
A foam-crowned wave of evil, in whose downdraught
Our Cymri would be drawn the way of doom.

Our chieftain watched his message take its round,
And met its silent answer with his eyes,
As each of his fierce followers in turn
Possessed his mind.

And all this while it stood,—
The heavenly vision of our vanished Mona,—

171

With looks meseemed of all too-human sorrow
For one who was a visitor to earth
From Gwynfyd, sphere of utter joy in love.

And still for him she was, and yet was not,
As there he sate unwitting, with the arm
Of Bronwen interlacing his,—a staple
Locked firmly by her clasping hands,—the while
Her radiant brow, her smile, her bold bright eyes,
And breast whereon the jewels heaved and fell
With each exulting breath, proclaimed him hers,
All hers,—the bondman of her earth-born beauty.

And then I saw not whence it came, but felt
That Modwyth brushed my arm in passing near;
And lo, on Bronwen's breast there lay a blossom,—
Her infant's tender head; and as the rose
Shows tenfold fair companioned by the bud,
So Bronwen's beauty brightened as she sate,
Until it seemed to burn the eyes of men,
And voices multitudinous arose
And terrified the vision;—that I knew
The guests were all a-foot, their goblets ringing,

172

Their voices pitched together in acclaim
Of Eurien's beauteous wife, and Eurien's heir.

When all were sat again I sought the place
Of the white soul of Mona. It was gone.

And Eurien's glances, caught upon the tide
Of others' eyes, as is the wont of men,
Fell vanquished upon Bronwen, and he bent
And plucked from off the board some woven ears
Of wheat, and drowsy poppy blooms, with hearts
Black as from burning; so he crowned her triumph,
And taking Dafyth's harp within his hand,
Stood over her and sung. This was his lay:—

Mountain rose single and sweet,
Beaten upon by the wind and the rain,
Far from the passage of dainty feet,
Shedding thy perfume as treasure in vain;
Spreading a feast for the good of the bees,
Coining your heart into golden grain
For the murmuring guest and the wandering breeze
To speed or to scatter in dull disdain;—
Hard, fruitful life, pale mountain rose,
Whose seed through the ages grows, still grows.’

173

Rose of the valley, costly fair,—
A cup fulfilled with its own delight,—
Doubly closed from the eager air,
From the busy day, and the vulgar sight;
Plucked for my lady's peerless breast,
To perish upon it or ever at night
She draws it forth from its balmëd rest,—
Its winding-sheet so blinding white;
Soft, fruitless life, fair double rose,
Dead in thy passion's barren throes!

O single flower, whose lip uncurled
Sets free the virtues of its heart,
Whose riches are for all the world,
Whose beauty doth itself dispart,—
Say, canst thou make a home for joy
Secure as that which subtlest art
Hath folded in,—so deep, so coy,—
A maze that hath nor clue nor chart?
Say fruitful life, say single rose,
Whose seed through the ages grows, still—’

He paused upon a note; the broken stave,
Crushed by his fingers on the harp, died out
In a grieved sigh, and golden Eurien stood
Rapt, silent, motionless, an ivory image
With harp in hand, and gleaming hair spread out
In quivering rays; an image as of one

174

Caught in a sudden ecstasy of awe.
And I, Glân-Alarch followed with mine eyes
His gaze, and in the ghostly, sheeted moonbeams
Gleaming without the oriel, they alighted
Upon that same white spirit which late had looked
On Eurien from the table,—Mona's spirit,—
The sad, wide eyes o'ercharged with love and tears
Seeming to let their treasure overflow
And glorify her face, baptising it
With sorrow touched with purest light of heaven.

Even as I looked, the vision failed once more,
Dropped, and was quenched as drops and dies a spark,
And Eurien when I sought him in his place,
Had vanished too, the harp of Dafyth lying
Broken upon the floor, and Bronwen sitting
Pale and undone beneath her conqueror's crown,
The infant wailing at her breast unheeded,
Its tendril fingers and soft flexile lips
Seeking to reach the fount of motherhood,
Clinging by turns, and spurning at the gems,—
The hard bright stones that mocked its baffled quest.

175

Then I too rose and followed Eurien forth
Into the night; I knew that he had gone
To seek that guiding spirit, to hold speech
And question with it, if such thing might be.

The court, but only for the sounds that welled
From out the hall, was silent as a corpse
Beneath its sheet of moonlight; the black shadows
Immovable as mutes and funeral trappings
About its bastioned walls. He was not there.
And then I looked where white, with rifts of shadow,
The mighty flanks of Moel-Wythfa rose
And fell,—a waste of all incertitudes;
Then swept the spaces north and south and west,
With glances far and near; alike in vain;
Till from the hall the parting guests swarmed out
In murmurous companies, which took their way
Over the hills and valleys here and there
And sent a stir of life through the dead world.

I waited through the still small hours of night,
And waited when the hours yet small, were still
No longer; when the wind that churned the sea

176

And skimmed the waves blew salt upon my lips,
Sent a wild host of clouds disorderly
Over the setting moon's serener state,
And bore aloft the loosened bramble leaves;
Or hunted as a hound with nose to earth
Forcing the secrets of the silent sod,
And, getting scent of them, threw a shrill note
Keen through the night, and sped upon its way.

Then overhead the windy current paused;
Crag-Eyrie was besmeared, a vapoury blot,
Black on the luminous veil that wrapped the moon,
While still the unchained winds hunted the ground
Which seemed to find a voice and answer back.

I waited restless, trembling; less in fear
Than expectation; something pitched too high
For the worn instrument so wrought upon.
For Eurien,—the powers of light were with him,
But who should say what sloughs, what gulfs, what darkness,
Might lie upon the way which they should lead him?

177

That consummation which in human speech
We falsely call the ‘end,’ would be, was, well;
But the Time-spirit bore upon me hard,
And shook me as the wind the loosened leaves.

Then came the sound—oh, welcome on the mountains!—
Of Eurien's steps; and through the rifted clouds
The stars looked down, and let me see his face.
'Twas Eurien, and not Eurien; a change
Had past upon him;—nay, it was all Eurien,—
And I had never seen him all till now.

He spoke and low, but with a voice which seemed
To ring against the starry floor of heaven
And thence return to overflow mine ear:

‘She lives, Glân-Alarch; I have looked on her,
Have heard her voice; she lives for Wales and me;
Love will not let her spirit free of us,—
Death cannot hold her,—love has conquered it!’

He ceased to speak, and I, the elder seer,

178

Waited his mood in silence. Then he turned,
Facing the castle:

‘There I saw her stand,
When at the feast, where I had lost myself,
She found me with her eyes. Glân-Alarch mine,
How knew you that the dead could speak to us?
My eyes, my ears, are open now as yours.’

I said ‘My son, they speak to awful purpose.’

Then he: ‘She lives, and I,—if I live too,
Who should have perished in the cloud which made
Crag Eyrie one black sea of yawning graves,—
I live to do her bidding.’

‘I had past
Beyond that Clogwyn, whither my spirit bore me
In quest of her who had been rapt away,
Lost while my soul seemed fastened upon hers,
When the cloud came,—she in it, though I wist not;
It came, it compassed me, a sable wall;
Then but for her, each step had been a step
Towards death; for the fierce winds arose, and drove me,

179

A vessel tost amongst the unseen rocks
And eddies, that I bade farewell to life;
When at my side a voice from out the darkness
Whispered me softly:

“Follow, Eurien, follow!”
And I did follow blindly where she led,
For it was Mona's voice, and Mona's heart
Beating so near mine own I seemed to hear it;
But no, believe me not,—that could not be,
The vision had no part in that; that was
The heightened life, and double beat of mine.

‘And still that voice before me seemed to rise
From out the ground where step by step my foot
Met the hard rock; still “Eurien, follow, Eurien!”
And still I followed, walking as she led me,
Walking I knew not whither,—if to death
Or to some end of life yet hid from me;
Till following, and still following her, the cloud
Grew lighter as I reached its burnished edge,
And then I knew that hanging on that voice
Through a black hour of peril, I had past
Safely the awful ridge of Crib-y-dysgull;

180

And so, in growing light, I followed still
The voice now faint, and fainter, till the breeze
Which bore it to me, almost seemed to claim it;
And now from off the vale it floated back,
Still “Follow, Eurien, follow,” till I came
Well nigh to Garth, and then the words were changed:
“Teudric and Tintern” was the burthen now
Laid on my heart, until the voice was gone,
Expiring on the road which leads to them.’

‘Teudric and Tintern;’ I had caught these words
On Eurien's lips before; for as I think
They long had been the watchwords of true thoughts
Which strove to win a way to outer act.

‘Behold, Glân-Alarch, these my hands, ere now
They had been still for kites and earns to play with
And part the fingers; if I hold them thus,
It is that they were spared for stouter work
Than to chastise a nettle that hath stung us
Who grapple in a serpent's deadly folds.
No, by my faith, they shall not let the blood
Of Cymri forth to smell in Cymric nostrils

181

And move the beast in Cymric hearts to ravin.
If now I live, I live as one new born,
And born for Britain. No more dazed or drifted
By doubt and wrath, or stagnate in the shallows
The weak call Fate, I swear through mirk and mist
To hold the highest hope, and follow it
With will as strong as will of man may be,—
Such will being Franklin to the will of God.
The man who hath no call to lead the herd
May waken to the task the sleeping herdsman;
The stalwart arm may prompt the dreamy head;
He who is not a saving light may lift
A saving voice.’

He paused; my heart was so
At one with him, I knew not if I spoke,
But he it was who said:

‘The light now waxeth;
It may be, as it spreads, that we no more
Shall see it shining as a star apart
In men who are as gods upon the earth;
That in the growing manhood of the world
Each one shall be a candle to himself;
That Teudric, whose great heart hath all but 'scaped

182

The flesh that lies so light on it, and Eurien,
And Mowric, and no better men, shall be
The kings of battle in the days to come;—
Not such as Arthur fresh from Avalon,
Nor any with God's seal upon their brows.
Wherefore, Glân-Alarch, such as here I stand,
I throw myself with every hope of life,
Name, fame, joy, pride, all, keeping nothing back,
Into that cause all will too poorly serve.’

So Eurien, who had laid his vengeance once
On Mona's grave, whence evil hands had plucked it,
Now cast it from his path in quiet scorn,
To free the way whereto her voice had called him.

Then Modwyth, dim and dubious as the dawn
Now trembling in the east, drew near to us,
And Eurien, knowing that the woman's love
Was great beyond the joy she had of it,
Feared not to show her all his heart and purpose.
Whereon we crept like thieves, feeling our way
Through the thick sleeping shadows of the hall,
Each to his silent chamber, and his thoughts.

183

When Eurien laid his body down to rest,
Though wandering still in spirit up and down
That cloudy pass of death wherefrom a thread
Of silvery sound had saved him, by his side,
Robed in the unmoved majesty of sleep,
A dreamless nursing mother lay Bronwen.

With morning light there came a word to Garth,—
A word that had been blown from lip to lip,—
Whose airy passage left no trace,—a word
That walked in darkness e'en as pestilence,
A word that stole, and burst like wind or fire
Upon that foregone state which now we called
Our peace; the word was one we knew too well;
War was the word, and war must be the answer.

The Saxon foe had waited not our onslaught;
They of the West were marching on the Severn,
To hurl defiance at its guardian arm
And foul its virgin bosom with the tread
Of their marauding hordes; to cross our threshold
And dare us with our backs against our mountains,
Our feet upon the soil wherein our hearts

184

Were rooted. Such the wandering word that found us,
And found us ready, ready to an hour,
With a young hope new-born to meet the call.

A hasty council had been held at dawn
With Mowric, and the chiefs the towers of Garth
Had guarded through the night; and Eurien's voice
Had rung with sound of such deep heart and true,
As set all others ringing in accord.

‘Teudric the Holy’ was the word of hope
Whose way our chieftain won to every heart.
While yet the day was young, our lingering guests
Left hurriedly; it had been younger still
When I and Modwyth, Bronwen and the babe—
His soft cheek flushed with Eurien's parting kiss—
Watched a dim figure winding down the slope,—
A solitary shape, in palmer's weed,
The hooded head close shorn from chin to crown,—
And knew that deep beneath that hood there lay
A tongue whose silvery matin chime would wake
The hermit of the Wye—our royal Teudric,—

185

If lusty limbs and supple wit, might shear
A path for it through hordes of gathering Saxons.

Eurien, his costly life within his hand,
Was gone to call our saint from silent prayer
To hear God's answer in the tongue of war,—
To raise in view of our distracted Cymri
A flag of happy omen, which should draw them
From the vain shallows of divided aims,
To the broad ocean where the breath of God
Wafts men and peoples on life's grand highways.

But Bronwen smote her hand upon the stone
Whereon she leaned, and lifted angry eyes:

‘Thus have we come to see a king of Snowdon
Steal from his gates,—the eagle grown an owl,—
And following on a guest as bare of honour
As the shorn head is of its golden wealth.’

No word had I to spare, for thought of Modwyth,
Whose farewell blessing, ringing hard as steel,
Had shaken her, that now she leaned her arm

186

On mine in sudden quailing as she said:
‘That face beneath the hood was e'en as Gwynion's;
God grant it be not gone from me as hers!’

And true it was that Eurien's beardless lip
Had changes swift and sweet as his dead sister's.

Then both to her and Bronwen and my heart
I answered:

‘We can never see him greater;
His hand was ever free to yield his goods,
But now he gives up pride and praise of men,
Showing himself thereby a son of God
Who scatters while his hirelings scrape and gather.’

We watched him till he faded in the mist
Which clomb the mountain's side as he went down it,
Following in faith the visionary words,
‘Teudric and Tintern.’ Then we turned within
And faced with our full hearts the empty house.

187

III

And now lone Garth seemed stricken as with death,
Falling upon a life too clamorous,
And quitted in disorder; but beneath
This sullen semblance, stirred in some of us
A quickened pulse of life; our quiet breath
Was warely drawn that it should bar no sound;
Our lips clung closer that our ears were open;
Our eyes forbore to meet, lest they in meeting
Might flash upon a doubt. On Modwyth's distaff
The flax nor waxed nor waned, while ghost-like, noiseless
She flitted through the house; but when one day
We met together by the glowing hearth,
And Bronwen to the infant in her arms—
For she with us was stricken silent too—
Made moan that she was left a woeful woman,

188

Twice widowed with a babe upon her hands,
To tie them, or to burthen her in flight,—
Modwyth looked coldly on the rounded cheek
Whence mortal shafts had glanced as from a ball:
‘I give my son to Wales, whose cause is God's,
As freely as God gave my son to me.’
She said; and in the jet of fiery speech
Flushed as the snow which rounds a burning crater.

And then she wandered forth, as was her wont
At eventide, when toiling hands were free,
And pass'd from roof to roof, lowly and pervious
To driving winds, and blasts of bitter fate,
In tender ministration; but this night
The woman might have been a gleaming brand,
Or rod of steel, to call a heart of flame
From wood or stone; no hearth so cold, no heart
So weary, but she struck from it an answer.

And I, whose heart was all a-flame as hers,
Whose hand was all as weak, still burned to speed
Our sacred cause,—make fit for Eurien's grasp
The tools, and gather for his work. My thoughts

189

Still ran on Cynorac, he who held his thralls
In such fierce practice of the game of war
As made them worth the winning. 'Twas enough
That treachery, I know not how enacted,
Had marred the emollient power of Eurien's gift;
I thought the tongue that had left off to sing,
Might yet avail to speak; the idle breath
To clear the cloud of lies, to heal and sweeten
The gangrened sore with truth. So on a day
I summoned Methuen, he who has in charge
My silent harp, or leads the galloway
That bears it as my sign of minstrel state
When far I journey; him I called, and took
My staff in hand, and facing Moel-Wythfa,
Toiled up the path I loved, breathing new life
And hope with each new step. When near the summit,
On Crib-y-dysgull, my white hairs were taken
And spread in one long pennon on the wind,
I laughed to think I bore a flag of truce
No manly foe would scorn. So down we went
With quickened steps, and came to where men dwell,
And breathe the common air; and as we neared

190

The Pass and left the silence of the heights,
We heard from out the covert of the fern
The ceaseless crooning of that fierce love-plaint
Wherewith the stag seeks pity of the hind.
We past the creatures by, and scattered them
O'er brake and boulder; all but one, the weary
And weightily-crowned monarch of the herd,
Who reared his antlered head in proud defiance,
Rose to his feet, and followed with faint steps
And few, then sank upon his doubled knees
Forlorn, and laid his glory in the dust.
I, moved with pity for the humbled despot,
By friend and fere deserted in his need,
Bade Methuen hasten to the ranger's house
And bring him help of man to live or die.

So I descended to the Pass alone,
And wandered lonely by the troubled river
That beats its way among the rocks, and roars
For very desolation. I, Glân-Alarch,
The ruin of a man, and of a bard,
Wandering amongst the ruins of a world.
And lonely as I went, a warning note,

191

As of a bird that signals to its young,
Struck dubious on my ear that had not lost
Its woodcraft; and I looked, and lo! before me
Leaning upon his staff, stood silent Peter,
The shepherd of the Pass; and as I gazed
Into his eyes that read the stars, I thought
But marvelled not—that they were deep and secret.
Then straight above the fretting of the waters
There rose and fell, ere I had fairly caught it,
The quick, impatient whine of some dumb joy,
Silenced I thought by human voice unheard.

Then all the ruined world took shape of life.
To my perplexëd sense; the riven rocks
Tumbled about the valley,—shattered crowns
Of mountain kings that frowned upon their fall—
Had shadows full of secrets as the eyes
And signal of the shepherd. I sate silent;
I looked, I listened. Sheer in face of me
The tortured Glyder showed his haggard side,
Filed by the glacier drifts, lashed by the storm,
Mined by the floods, gnawn by the hungry frost,
The but of all the forces of the world,

192

Biding the end in sullen scorn of pain.
There, rended from his brow, lodged in the vale
Close by the river's bed, I marked a rock
Which, hurled on other twain, had made betwixt them
A cavern whence, as there I sate, there came
A voice of song so deep, so sweet, so strange,
Yet so familiar to mine ear withal,
That as it rose and poised itself aloft
Betwixt the savage Glyder and Crib-Coch,
I thought that o'er that chaos, wreck, and ruin,
Where death hath made his dwelling with despair,
I heard the breathing of the spirit of life,
The soul of order and of harmony,
Which I had sought for day and night, and found,
And lost, and found to lose again, and seek
With growing love, and growing pain of loss
Throughout the glimpses of the universe.
The very Glyder softened to the song
And crowned himself with patience; and the stream
Murmured no more, but leaped upon his way
Rejoicing in his strength.

I too rejoiced;
The more because the Angel of the Presence,—

193

She who had borne to me this day the word
Of life was—yes, I saw her there, beside
The cavern's open mouth,—Mona, the youngest
And dearest of the spirits; as I looked
I grasped the stone beneath me; firm, all firm,
Although the Glyder seemed to reel, as slowly
She moved towards me, and with voice of speech
Sweet as her song, though lower, with like potence
Subtly to shape the roar of life to music,
She, looking on me sadly, laid a hand
Which was not of a spirit, on my brow
And softly said:

‘You sing no more, Glân-Alarch.’
I answered not. I thought the grave had opened
And given forth the dead. I knew this Mona
Had come through other than the gate of vision.

She spoke again: ‘You sing no more, Glân-Alarch;
Is it because you thought your merle was silent?
Now you have heard her sing, you too will sing.’

Alas, I could but weep for joy and sorrow,
Fighting against my tears that I might see,

194

Pressing my brow against her gentle hand,
Straining her other hand against my breast
And songless lips, then joining both my own
In prayer and futile blessing on her head;
Till wrath of that which was her lot o'ercame me,
And up I rose and asked in bitter scorn
What miracle had spared her life for this—
For this, the last cold mockery of fate?

She answered hurriedly, as one not noting
The dissonance; then sweeping with her glance
All paths of access, saw we were alone,
And breathed more freely:

‘I was saved, Glân-Alarch,—
Made free of the unlovely flesh, which still
Had been to him a bond or a reproach,
And set to do him service as a spirit,
And as a disembodied soul, to grow
Dearer, more lovely in the light of thought,
Yet dwell with him on the same plane of being,
And breathe with him the sweet air of the world;—
Saved as by miracle, from the base joy
Of living as a beggar on his bounty,—

195

A beggar with one plea, that I was blind;—
Saved, saved from this, to do the thing whereto
My spirit, poorly housed, was sent by God:
To watch him as his shadow, and to gather
Here, in the silence of my hidden life,
God's message in the wind and in the stars,
And bear him when his senses are perturbed
By grosser clamour of his working days.’

She swept me with her as a stream of music
Floats us away unquestioning, and lands us
To walk awhile upon the golden sands
Of some high strand, and wake as from a dream,
Yet waking still to hold within our grasp
Some gathered treasure which affirms all true.

She swept me with her, but I held her hands
Lest she should vanish, and her swifter spirit
Leave me behind; I clung to her,—the child,—
I, old and grey Glân-Alarch,—for she floated
Where I had all but sunk.
Then she again:

‘I learnt the truth of Bronwen; it was truth

196

Which then she spoke; would God she knew no other!
My love was not a flower to grace his life;
I stood before him as a rod, which never
Would blossom in his hand. I cried to God
To hide me from my love and Eurien's truth;
And then I know no more, but that I fell,
And falling grasped unknowingly, the sapling
Which grows from out the rock where it breaks off
Sheer, jagged, dreadful, and was shot from it
In rising, as an arrow from a bow,—
Shot clear of danger from the jutting crags,
And dropped into the tallest of those trees
That rise from out the stunted grove there striving
Towards Clogwyn Cromlech.

When I woke to life,
I lay within the pliant, leafy branches,
Which swayed upon the stem as sways a cradle,
And thought I was new-born; I had no mother,—
But that was nothing strange. I lay awhile
Faint, weary, something soothed, till stung with thought
As new-born things with hunger, I crept down

197

And touched again the stony earth, and fled
From all which had been, and could be no more,
Setting Crag-Eyrie 'twixt my love and me.
Since when, I dwell with Peter, here.’

She paused;
I held her hands as in a drowning clasp;
I looked at her as I would reach her soul.
Her cheek was pale,—it ever had been pale,—
Her eyes were darker, deeper, deep as lakes
That lie in shadow of the purple mountains;
The hands I held, abandoned now to mine,
Slender and soft, were instinct with a power
Which could have slipt their bonds had she so willed it,
As summer buds their sheaths. I felt the life
Latent within them; saw it play about
The reticent beauty of her maiden contours,
The limbs so firmly poised, and the shut lips
Of which she held such gentle mastery,—
And knew that she was filled with the strong breath
Of morning on the mountains!

I had been
A fighter in my time, and knew the joy

198

Of conflict, and the stirrings of high heart
That meet and cope with fate; so clinging still
To Mona's yielded hands, she drew me on,
That I grew brave for her as she was brave,
And kept back curses which had frightened song.
There as she sate she bade me swear to guard
Her secret as I loved her peace; I swore;
Then told her whereunto my steps were bound,
And of my hope of winning Cynorac
To join our levies with his men at arms.

‘Glân-Alarch you will prosper, he will join them!’
I missed the music from her voice, and pressed
Bare palms together as she wrung her hands:

‘False, false, Glân-Alarch, false to him, thrice false!’

Then sharp above her cry of pain, there pierced
The signal of the shepherd. One short moment
She fell into my arms, and in her eyes
Rose the dumb yearning of some patient brute,
While on my cheek her filial kisses clung
And tore my heart away with them; again:

199

‘Glân-Alarch, Bard of Glyneth, you will sing;—
Let me not live to think I murder music!’

Then fled, and left me clutching at the air.

The hues had faded from her bardic mantle,
And as a creature under seal of nature
She melted into mist among the rocks;
Only my sense was guided to the cavern
By Myneth's chastened welcome, as I sate
And gazed thereon till Methuen with the palfrey
Bearing my harp drew near; when I arose
And trod the downward path along the Pass,
Reeling as one made drunk, I knew not whether
Of joy or sorrow. Then I touched the chords;
I fain had done her bidding, but my heart,
My troubled heart still barred the way of song;
And silently, with downcast looks I went,
Shamed by the brave pure breath of the racked Glyder
Wandering amongst my harp's discordant strings.

One time the tale of Cynorac's surrender
Had waked some note of triumph; but not now;

200

I tell it, but the earth, and eke the heavens
Are thronged and overflowed with such high tidings,
It falls as a sole wave of a wild sea;
I tell it, but the sound is overborne.

So came we to the lake where Cynorac
Keeps his disordered state; the quiet mirror
Where many a deed of violence is glassed;
And took our greeting firstly from the dogs
That pressed upon our steps in clamorous question.
My bardic robe and sorry flag of truce
Won us our way within. I gave my greeting,
And put my question too:

‘Had Eurien's gift
And courteous message haply met mischance?’
Then Cynorac, who is curious in oaths,
Leaving his place among his lounging followers,
Whose eyes were heavy as with some late orgie,
Swore by his gods and saints, that never gift,
Nor aught at Eurien's hand had come his way,
But blows betwixt their people in time past,
And later, poisonous words, to make ill blood,
And taunts to stir up strife.’

201

I heard and waited,
Letting him rage the wind from out his lungs
Before I took the word. Then I laid bare
The lies that had been sown as dragons' teeth
Betwixt our chief and him. I said the heart
Of Eurien now was all subdued to love
Of our wild Wales, so had no corner left
For jealous variance with our mother's sons.
And as I spoke, my tears, my love o'erflowed,
And words that as I struggled in the Pass
Had tried to shape themselves in song, but found
No tuneful way, being pressed and overborne
By weight of my sad spirit, now broke loose,
Fell molten from my kindling heart to theirs,
Touching them with its fire, till they too kindled,
Even to the rudest of the rout, and rose
And striking hands, took God and man to witness,
As they had Cymric hearts within their breasts,
That Eurien's love in them should find its answer.
And then they set me in a chair of state,
Whose broideries hung around in tattered flags;
Cleared the torn rushes round my feet, of bones
The dogs had gnawed, and propped them on a stool;

202

Then called to set on meat, and plied us both
With mead and ale.

And so we ate their salt,
And went away content with what was won.

Silent when next we past it, was the cave,—
Cold virgin chamber, wind and storm-wrought nest,—
Whereon I dared not looked with Methuen near;
But later, when we reached the highest step
Of homeward progress, on our view there burst
Another world,—a world of life and hope
And motion, wakened since we twain had left it
Sleeping in silence of the dawn.

Swift shapes
Traversed the vales, or clomb the skirts of hills
In lines that had their centre each in Garth,
Which lay beneath us like a swarming hive
Pressed by a moving and a murmurous crowd.
High on its highest turret waved the sanguine
Standard of the Pendragonate; beneath it,
The flag of Eurien's house,—the golden eagle
Spread on a snowy field. Our hearts leapt up;
We stood a moment breathless, then our feet

203

Put off the clogs of Time, and took on wings;
I lighted from the galloway, I felt
My swifter blood must bear me swiftlier home.
Eurien was there, and Teudric had been won:
So much the crowd and waving emblems told us.
And as we went, and shadows of the night
Began to gather on the hills, the glow
Of furnaces within the courts of Garth
Grew redder, till we saw the sparks thrown off,
And heard the hammers ring upon the steel
Of arms the smiths were forging in hot haste.
And still as we came down, the swarm of men
Was moving, thinning round the castle walls,
As pickets under native convoy, went
To quarters in the hamlets strown around.

The hour was then upon us; the long year
Of waiting sped at length; our day of vengeance
Come at the last,—I saw it in the sky
Where a torn wreath of cloud, like flying squadrons,
Gory with many a gash, which seemed to drop
And stain the bloody shield of Lynn-y-Gader,—
Was driven to the east,—the plundering Sassenach

204

Was driven backward to the East, our Cymri
Avenged and free: I saw it writ in heaven!
I forced a passage through the throng to Eurien,
Who stood within its midst, its heart, its head,
His knights around him, and his squires still going,
Bearing his mandates, faring back to him
With tidings from without, carrying his life
Through all the heaving body.

With my heart
That bounded to my lips and held them silent,
I hailed him to his place; he clasped my hand,
And beamed on me a moment; then he threw
His arm athwart my shoulder, pressing it
As he would make me proud by leaning there;
So ended that whereon his mind was set,
Yet wound me in the current of his life.
When Eurien's thought was woven into act,—
Spun off as silk that leaves a full-charged shuttle,—
And in the pause he turned again on me,
I showed him where the Saxon squadrons fell,
Stumbling upon the corpses of the slain,
Followed by that wild cloud of vengeful Cymri.

205

Even as we looked the gory hues were quenched,
A lurid pallor wrapped the fallen host;
I whispered: ‘See, their wounds are staunched in death.’
We paused a moment gazing on their ruin,
While gathering hoards of Cymri sweeping past them
Pursued a scattered remnant to the east.
I said: ‘See now, we drive them o'er their borders!
He answered: ‘Where, God willing, we will keep them;’
Then turned him to his task.

When somewhat later,—
The last armed picket wending down the hill,
The crowd dispersed, the knights and squires withdrawn,
And we two left alone but for the hammers
Whose mighty strokes held fast the workmen's sense,—
He told me what I burned to hear; that Teudric,
Our roused Pendragon, our recovered Arthur,
Had left the border land betwixt two worlds
Where he had dwelt in prayer and happy vision,
To come among us struggling in the slough,

206

Divided in the darkness, and to draw us
Together in one brotherhood of hope.

Teudric was at Glamorgan, where his standard
Was rallying a warlike host, which joined
By Eurien's levies, with his brother chieftains,
Would march and greet the foe on this side Severn.

Then Eurien leaning on the parapet
As somewhat weary, asked me of the journey
Whereof no soul at Garth possessed the secret
When forth I went at dawn.

I too sat down,
And over him I broke my joyful news,
Even as the woman broke the box of spikenard
Whose precious balms should ease her weary lord.
I told him how that I, his old Glân-Alarch,
Led by a hope that came, I said not whence,
Had faced the lion Cynorac in his den,
And laying on him with his heavy wrongs
To Eurien and to Wales, had stormed his heart
And made it captive to our cause.

He rose,—

207

Oh, joy of triumph tasted yet again!—
He rose up stronger for my precious balms,
And stood before me 'twixt the rising moon
And dusky glare of forges, that I saw
The hope of all our lives whose flame is fanned
By every breath that blows, burn in his eye,
And knew it rapt him to some high, clear place
Of 'vantage where—our very failures take—
Nay, that is nought, but where—I can no more;
Words come not as I call them to my lips,
And shall not force their way in my despite!
I am no prophet to be set to curse
Where I would bless; peace heart! or break in silence.
I talked of joy and triumph, mine and Eurien's,
Known in the cause for which we hold our lives;
I find the note again, I make it ring;
What a false instrument is man, when time
Has slacked his chords!

Ay, Eurien was joyful,
He said: ‘We now shall march to meet the foe,
No man among us stayed by self-made wounds;
You, my Glân-Alarch, you have cured the last,
Now we shall go forth whole.’

208

Whereon he called
His trusted Wythan, gave him first his share
In present joy, then told him he must wake
The morrow from its lazy couch of rest,
And shame it,—shame it even on the brow
Of Moel-Wythfa, as he bore the standard
Glowing to Cynorac, and therewith the word:
‘For Teudric and the bleeding heart of Britain!’

Then we who caught his fire, wrung out the cry:
‘For Teudric and the bleeding heart of Britain!’
When Wythan went, I pressed him:

‘What of Teudric,
How bears he the Pendragonate once borne,
And haply to be borne again, of Arthur?’

He said: ‘He bears it royally, not bowing
Either beneath it, or his weightier years.
He turns a face on men that still is shining
As from the face of God. The chiefs behold him
And press to do him reverence; farther off,
The people see, and hail him for their saviour.
He works unwearied, sleeplessly, as though

209

The battle-field should be his bed of rest.
Time has but calmed, not cooled him, such in that
As you may grow to be, the Fates assenting.’

'Twas then I asked of him a boon, which long
Had trembled at my heart:

‘Chief, not so old
Your ancient Bard but he can fight beside you?’

Then a great pity quenched the hopeful light
Of Eurien's gaze; and so my doom fell on me
Before he spoke:

‘Glân-Alarch, we must change
Our places if you cannot bide to shield
With wisdom, and with valour, as may be,
From dangers of our too-unguarded coast,
The mother, child, and wife I leave behind me.’

I said no more; I was not born a king,
And saw the joy of battles was a joy
Foregone with all the rest. I could have wept,
But that my chieftain's sorrowing gaze withheld me;
And then our work, which shamed self-pleasing thought;

210

The treasure of our house, left in my hand
By Eurien, must be cared for; we concerted
Together of the means, how best to make
The little seem the more. When all was said,
In passing by the forges, where the hammers
Were ringing still their deadly chimes, he paused,
And from his girdle took the leaden ball
Clasped by that silver hand with rings be-gemmed,
And cast it in the hottest of the furnace.
Then to the smith who broke off work, he said:

‘Hollow me out a chamber in that falchion,
And furnish with the metal melting there;
Build it well in, the falchion is for me,—
The gems for any here who care to glean them.’

He waited till the weapon was matured,
Then took it, and for proof, upon the anvil
Let fall a stroke or two. His arm was strong,
His fire-lit face as an avenging god's.
We went our way; he looked up clear to heaven
Which, ere the moon had lost her perfect shape,
Would cease to be his debtor for an oath.

211

The women all were busy in the house
As we without, but rose as we twain entered,
And stood before their work as children use
When making gifts which shall surprise a feast-day.

The morrow, when the sun had past the height
Of noon, the ancient towers of Garth-y-Gwin
Looked down upon the gathered host, which waited
The coming but of Cynorac to march.
Our chief was in the hall, with all the flower
Of Snowdon and its border chivalry,—
A glittering crescent,—when the glad huzzas
Announced the friend, but late the midnight foe,
First seen by us to head his desperate troop
In open sunlight.

Boisterous was the greeting
Wherewith methought some seemly shame was covered;
But Eurien's gracious manhood and frank speech,
Confessed at first, then turned the blotted page
Of memory, as he bade a squire bring forth
The sacred drinking-cup, our deep blue Hîrlas;
Which filled, he pledged the future of our love,
Then filled again, and gave to Cynorac,

212

While brimming horns of mead were served around,
And knight and squire advanced to strike the Hîrlas
And make it ring in sign of true accord.

It came to Weroc's turn; he was the last;
His eyes were downcast, but he raised his horn
To touch the sacred vessel. When his hand
Moved forward to its aim, it met but air,
Dumb, and without resistance. Cynorac
Was draining the deep draught within the cup.
He set it down:

‘I make no pledge with traitors’
Was all he said. He turned away, and quickly
The two were sundered by a wall of men,
And Weroc, abject, dumb but for an oath
Which rattled half unuttered in his throat,
Fell back among the women. Cynorac
Had struck the scent since yesterday.

Our chief
Looked on in stern misgiving; then he said:
‘No hand so black but Saxon blood will purge it.’
His eyes were fixed on Weroc, and so followed
The glance the caitiff stole at Bronwen. She

213

Was pale as is the froth upon the mead;
The fair, soft hand she steadied on the board,
Clung like the talon of a bird of prey,
And Eurien saw her lip and cheek grow rigid,
Fierce with a passion that to him was strange,
Not scorn of baseness, flash of righteous wrath,—
Only the slow, cold cruelty of fear.

A question trembled on his lips and died there,
Where like a corpse it stopped the way, and chilled
The parting kiss exchanged between these two.
Then Eurien turned, nor gave one look behind,
But beckoned with the hand to lord and knight,
And past into the court, where Cynorac
Sprung to his stirrup, when with one clear bound
Our chieftain vaulted mail-clad to the saddle;
Then faced the troops, formed now in line of march,
And, off a dark cloud, shining like a star,
He said:
‘My brother knights, and ye, my children,—
We who stand here, the right arm of our country,
We go to join our high, anointed Head,
Teudric, of all the saints of God the saintliest,

214

So worthiest of them all to bear His message
Of vengeance for the slaughter of His saints!
We go to join our Head,—our new-found Head,—
And pair with other limbs that join with us;
God give that we content ourselves and them,—
God give that we content ourselves and Him!’

Our chief drew in the circle of his gaze,
And then went on:

‘In the fair olden time
There have been foes who, met in generous strife,
Have hand to hand, and eye to eye, together
Lived through a spell of such high-seasoned joy
As well had crowned a banquet of the gods.
So won they then, or lost, they took their fate
As men, and of the lusty time so shared
The lusty foe went not without his part
In memory: men were grateful for their joy.
But friends, the Sassenach, though brave he be,
Is a hard foe, unknightly, villainous,—
No joy, no pride of him, but in his fall;
No hope for us, but in his overthrow!
But joy and pride,—these be no words to suit

215

Our mood this day,—but toys for happier time;
For burning wrong, no joy but burning vengeance;
Nay, vengeance even may be ornament
Too bright as yet for lives so bare as ours.
Brethren and children! we go forth to-day
To wrest from the brute foe the leave to live,—
To live and labour on our hills, and breathe
Unshamed the pure air caught upon their heights,—
Which taken, we will see to crown our lives
With all which makes life worth the toil of men.’

Our chieftain spoke, then raised his voice on high,
Giving the cry whereto all voices joined:
‘For Teudric and the bleeding heart of Britain!’
So the long line moved forward down the slope,
Sun-smitten, brightening in its winding course
As some huge, changeful dragon, jewel-headed.

We followed with our eyes and with our prayers,
And saw the bannered legion pass beneath
A rainbow's two-fold arch, which spanned a cloud
Dense, purple, strange,—charged full of mystery,
While overhead a silvery veil of mist,

216

Shook down a shower of drops, whereon the sun
Smote brightly as they fell, tear-shaped, like pearls,
But more than diamonds glistering on the gloom.

Then we who saw this turbid wave sweep forward
To break itself in deadly shock of war,
Felt as a crew becalmed upon a sea
Whose dangers were the quiet face of death.

The days crept on; the hunger of suspense,
Cheated at first by needful toil, erewhile
Gnawed at our hearts. Then came to our relief
An envoy sent by Eurien; his contingent
Had joined the host of Teudric, and fresh forces
To that were gathered daily. The hot breath
Which blew the word of war from north to south
Had found us of the north, like smouldering fire,
Ready to leap at once to angry flame;
Those of the south, like fuel somewhat green,
Yielding an answer tardier, if as sure.

The eddies of the bitter wintry winds
Wound round our house of Garth as they would tear

217

Its roots from out the earth, and found us waiting,
Still waiting while the hosts on each side Severn
Strengthened themselves, and grew, and waited too,
Watchful by day and night as envious beasts
That guard their dens, and roar out fierce defiance,
Yet keep their ground, seeking with feints to tempt
Each other to the onslaught. For our Britons—
They would not budge; their backs were to their mountains,
Their feet firm-planted on the soil they loved;
They curbed their native ardour, and still waited
Where most they felt their strength, to give the Saxon
His deadly welcome.

People passionate!
Charged with the burthen of the unborn Time!
Hard-hunted Cymri,—easy to beguile,
Tender, if fierce, fierce only in defence,—
Or urged, or stung by mighty love or wrong,—
Ye are—I see it writ as by the finger
Of God upon the table of our hills—
Are of the women races of the world:
Forward to ripen, apt to droop and wither
Unripened where the season's breath is harsh,

218

But bearing quick within ye, living, dying,
The embryonic hopes of human kind!

In these slow days, while Modwyth sat and spun,
Setting her face as if against the wind,
Looking as though her body had been left
A house deserted, while her spirit wandered
Beside the tented borders of the Severn,
My thoughts, more restless, travelled to and fro,
My heart divided, sometimes lingered near;
And every day at dawn I tuned my harp,—
But never dawn or day found voice to sing.

And while we twain were wrapped in silent thought,
Bronwen, whose ear was set to every sound,
Would start if but the ivy flapped the lintel;
And often she would stand and strain her eyes
Towards Caereg-Havod, and burst forth in sudden,
Bitter bewailment of her state, that she,
Who thought to shield her widowhood beneath
The strongest arm in Britain, should be left,
A mark for Saxon fury, in this den
Wherefrom all lusty manhood had departed.

219

When Modwyth on a day took up the babe
And laid it in her arms to comfort her,
She wept but angrier tears, and hailed the child
Forsaken of his father, left to perish;
Said that the house of Eurien would be swept
Clean from the earth, and nought of her be left
But Poplet, happy that he dwelt with strangers.
And then she turned on us, calling on all
Who loved their lives to seek a home of refuge
At Havod, where the lords had spared their own,
And stayed to shield the lives that hung thereon.

But we who honoured Eurien's young wisdom,
Crowned by authority of long descent,
Judged of his thought for us as of a thing
We might translate in freedom of our love,
But never could amend in form or substance.
And pitying the heart that was so faint,
We made a silence for her words to die in
As unrecorded curses, or brute bleatings.
And when the air was pure of them, then Modwyth
Arose, and laying hands on Bronwen's shoulders

220

As she would draw her to some loftier plane,
Cried fervently:
‘“Lift up your heads, ye gates,
Be ye lift up ye everlasting doors,
That so the King of glory may come in!”’
But Bronwen turned away, and drooped the more.

Then came the tidings that the Sassenach
Had crossed our borders, and we knew that now,
E'en now, the while we gazed in speechless passion
Into each other's faces, they were met,—
Our Cymri and that foe insatiate,
Locked in the fierce embrace of war.

The earth,
The air, the sun, the stars that shot as arrows
Athwart the sky at night, the birds, the beasts,
Each one of these was charged with its portent—
The which we knew not alway how to read.
One such had well-nigh come, which, had it come,
Had silenced hope.

What time we watched the stars,
The fire upon the hearth,—kindled in spring
From the great heart of fire, the sun himself,

221

Caught in a lens at the high feast of Bâltân,—

The bâltân, or sacred fire, was brought down from the sun by means of a lens, at the spring solstice to which our festival of Easter corresponds. No hearth was held sacred unless the fire on it had been re-lit from the bâltân, or from fire borrowed from it.

Had perished in our absence; not a spark
Remained to sight, but as a winding sheet
Wan ashes wrapt the wood. Without a word,
Trembling, aghast, we dropped upon our knees;
We blew new breath of life into the embers,
And hope leapt up with the reviving flame;
Our hearts had died within us had we failed.

The silence seemed to fill the house, and drove me
To wander forth; I rose up from the hearth,
I left my blessing on the infant's sleep,
And taking staff in hand, with hasty steps,
Over the hills I followed my full heart.
Over the hills,—the valleys could not hold me,—
Over the hills which shut me off from Eurien,
Where, as I strove against their heaving sides,
The burthen of the silence fell from off me.

The world was fair; it could not be his tomb;
I thought he lived, and lived to breathe the breath
Of brother's praise, and mount with it as mounts
A prayer uplift from many hearts at one.

222

And then I thought how he, the only one
Of all our Cymric chiefs, had sought to set
Above his own a name more reverend
With eld, and garnered deeds of wider fame;
And thinking thus, meseemed that mightier force
Would bear his soul on high, than praise of men,
Which was but as the smoke of priestly censers:—
True fire of sacrifice sent up to Him
Who is the living soul of sacrifice.
And then with chastened joy I seemed to see
My chieftain's face in twilight, which the time
Would turn to darkness; and the wide-winged eagle
Which topped his helm, all shadowy to the eyes
Of men, but burning full in sight of God.

So on I went, swept forward by my thoughts,
Forgetful of the way, until I fell,
In failing light and strength, upon a bare
And ruddy root of pine. My outstretched hand
Lighted among the needles of the bank,
Whence, with its stately peers, the tree sent up
Its dark embowered arms to meet the sky.

223

Then faint with fast and wearihead, which caught me
All unannounccd, as falls a tropic night,
I stretched my limbs in rapture of repose
Prone on the needles of the shadowy pines.

I think more often than in days gone by
My body, like a withered husk, which sheds
Its seeds around for wandering winds to scatter,
Lets forth my yearning spirits; that the vision,
Which comes not through the common gates of life,
Is readier now to wrap me than of old,
And waft me, or some ripened part of me,
Where I may look upon the unknown face,
Or see the upraised hand, of coming fate.

I ceased to think, or thought no more within
The caverned dome which serves my common use;
My knowledge grew, and filled a vaster sphere;
Our righteous cause was glorious, Eurien triumphed,
But over both a vast and regal shade,
With on its head a crown I knew to be
Of martyrdom fell, and eclipsed the brightness;

224

The riven bosom of the earth had opened,
And closed in silence over nobler seed
Than that which filled the furrowed fields of Garth.
The dead had sunk, with the new-buried grain,
To fruitful darkness, and the earth was still,
As one bereft; but from the blackest depth
Aloft, among the bare bones of the pines,
There rose and fell, and fell to rise again,
Thick vibrant waves of happy sound, which held
My spirit high as if it had been given
To hear the triumph of heroic deed
Gathering through all the ages.

Then there fell
Silence on me, as on the earth, perchance
The sweet, short death of sleep. When that was past,
I started up as one whose sealëd lids
Have let in sudden light; and lo, above me,
Between the parted branches, gleamed a star,
Ruddy like Mars, but not like him obeying
An ordered course; this vision of mine eyes
Descended swiftly, waxing as it came,
Until it was no more a globe, but only
A burning house whose smoky reek quenched all

225

The sweet balsamic breathing of the firs.
Life of my soul! That burning house was Havod,—
The woman standing in the crowd, and wringing
Her helpless hands in unavailing prayer
To foul-mouthed men, fierce soldiers, Sassenachs,—
There to wreak vengeance upon women's sleep,—
Was Bronwen, scantly draped as for the night;
But, God of day! the babe,—her bedfellow!—
Ah, shame upon those breasts which as she beat them
Shed sweet, warm, milky tears she feared to quench
In fiery search of him for whom they flowed!—
The babe was wrapped in dreams or death, cut off
Within the burning pile!

And still the woman,—
The only one of all the house whose hands
Were yet untied,—stood begging alien help,
Or darting here and there with smothered cries
Within the bounds of safety. Then it seemed
They mocked her, pointing to the stifling smoke,
That colunm rising like a monument
Over her infant's grave, and down she sunk,
Tame to the hold of their restraining hands,
With vacant, wandering eyes, and poor faint heart,

226

Stunned to oblivion almost of its pain,
And dropped her arms in credulous despair.

Vision that seemed so nigh, and was so far,
Mocking the eyes it seared, and cold clenched hands
That grappled as with flame,—my tortured sense
Had rent the flesh if longer you had stayed!
A hurried moment more, I see them seize her
Rudely, and laughing at her disarray,
As men made drunken by their own wild deeds.
And she,—she sinks upon the sod before them,
Clasping their knees and catching at their hands,
Shrieking out prayers for life, bare life, base life,
Dear life for all its burning smart of sorrow,—
Life she would buy how dear soe'er they priced it.

They gather up her helpless limbs between them,
And bear her, richest of their spoils, hemmed in
By guards, and followed by the sullen household,
Who, scarce awake, had found themselves in bonds
And fear of flaming death, and now were driven
Like cattle down the slope.

O God! the silence

227

When all were gone;—the thick, rank cloud of smoke,
And overhead the inaccessible stars!

A sound,—a swift, light step, a bounding step,
And brush of garments heavy with night dew,
Over the withered grass; a dusky shape
Wafted to its desire as if on wings,
Cleaving unfelt the stagnant wall of smoke
And breath of smouldering fire. I heard the step,
I saw the shape, I felt the seraph wings,
And knew the babe was saved;—safe, too, that maid
Whom nature loved and feared;—I saw no more.
Then first my tongue, fast bound, which rage and sorrow
Had striven vainly to unloose, gave forth
A cry of joy. I rose and looked about me;—
Around, the wave of dim, uncertain hills;
Above, the darkness of the pines, and through them,
The empty field from whence the star had floated.

Later, three neat-herds, who had left a steer
Dead somewhere on the spurs of Moel-Hebog,
Stumbled upon me, fallen by the way,
And bore me home to Garth.

228

Thrice happy Garth!
The air that was too stagnant for my breathing
A while agone, now shook with the strong joy
Of fervent souls,—pure light that was sublimed
By dew of tender tears.

Our cause, God's cause,
The cause of humankind in its slow triumph
Over the brute that baffles it, was carried
Once more, and we might breathe in freedom still
The higher life of men. Our golden Eurien
Was spared to us, and with a dwindled following
Encamped upon the plain of Aber-Glaslyn,
There to await the dawn. Our grey Pendragon,
He who had bound our wandering loves in one,
The saintly Teudric wore the crown of crowns;
He walked no more on earth, but as a shade
Fell into that possession of the dead—
The ever-present, twice-immortal dead
Not wholly hid in God,—the dead who keep
A home for ever in the hearts of men.
All this was stirring in the air at Garth,
Where eager voices crossed and clashed like cymbals,

229

When down the neat-herds set me in their midst,
And silenced them a moment.

Every soul
But Bronwen, who was wrapped, or so they deemed,
In sleep so deep it would not let her free,—
She with her infant, and her people brought
From Havod, who had sallied forth at eve
With coracles and torches to the lake
To falsely lure the fish their lady loved,—
Other than these, each soul that breathed at Garth
Was pressed into the hall, drawn, knit together,
Rapt, overflowing with the generous life
That rises sheer above the walls of flesh,
Fuses the diverse spirits of a crowd,
And of the separate elements creates
One God.

They brought and set me in the midst,
Speechless, not senseless, for my soul with theirs
Bore part in the great joy.

The flames of Havod,
Which earlier in the night had been a terror,
Seemed to the faithful crew the tide of war
Had left at Garth, to burn—our chieftain near—

230

In awful jubilation. So they watched
That night; with morning, other light arose.

In that same hour, when, stretched beneath the pines,
The fiery globe approached me, and revealed
As in a magic crystal that which past
Without the sphere of sense,—in that same hour,
Eurien returning crowned with the sad crown
Of victory where cypress hides the bays,
Wandered in slow-paced restlessness around
The tents and woven branches which shut in
His followers' hard-earned sleep.

The day was won,
But there were weeks of days, and months of weeks,
And years of months, wherein the strife renewed,
Might still make red the hands of men, and dim
The eyes of women. Eurien thought on this,
Watching that night beside the turbid waters
Of the blue stream where he had called a halt,
That light of day might shine upon the banners,
And gild the pride of his return to Garth.

Then upon Eurien's steel-blue eyes, keen eyes
That saw both near and far, and now were strained

231

Haply to catch some lated spark at Garth,—
There gleamed a sudden, fitful blaze, a tongue
Of flame which seemed by turns to lap the smoke
New-risen, and to fall back quenched within it.

A serpent's sting in entering at his flesh
Had wrought not so on Eurien as this gleam
Which pierced his eyes, empurpling them with fire
Of sudden wrath, as in his brain it lodged
Its sure, swift message. Havod and not Garth,
The treasure-house, nay, God of love, not Garth!
Sweet saints, and virgin mother, to whose heart
The sighs of sleeping innocence are dear,
Our chief has vowed rich tribute to your shrines,
Loth to have debts to love that owns no name.
His soldier's eye had measured space and bearings,
Not Garth, sweet Garth, filled full from floor to roof
With infant's breath, but dead, forsaken Havod
Passes from off the earth in fiery change.
As Eurien calls the watch to sound reveillé,
And hail the sleepers forth to arms and horse,
His spirit kindles with the rage of battle,
And only half-slaked thirst of dear revenge.

232

Out of the narrow jaws of Aber-Glaslyn,
Rounding the shadowy base of Moel-Hebog,
They pour, a rushing stream, a travelling cloud,
Hushing the meeting waters as they pass;
And now the hoofs ring hard against the sides
Of steep Y-Aran, and the whispering waters
Of Colwyn awed and shy as mother's welcome.
On through the valley, past the Giant's Head,
With Garn before them, and the furrowed sides
Of Mynyth-mawr, with, red betwixt the two,
The lurid cloud which blots out Careg-Havod.
Then set upon its rock, with Moel-Wythfa
And Moel-Elio, one on either side,
Garth and its lights, awake in silent joy,
Breaks into sight, and Eurien's heart is glad,
As over rugged ground, at breathless pace,
Beneath the smoothly-journeying, tranquil stars,
He flies, still flies, and leaves his ancient towers
To glide away with all the moving world;
Laughing the while within his beard to think
That Cymric craft has turned against the Sassenach
Who taught it, even as man has trained to guile
The hunted beast.

233

Seed has been dropped in byways
Upon the path of Eurien, that has rooted
In Saxon ears, and borne this burning harvest:
Words of false import, which have spoken Havod
The storehouse of all treasure due to Garth.

So on, rejoicing in his fruitful wiles,
He flew, while up aloft to listening Garth
The clear, glad echoes of his voice resounded
Above the tramp of horse, and told the watchers
Of help upon its way to burning Havod.

Then panting, straining past the sodden banks
Of Llyn-y-Gader, plunging through the stream
Which links it with Llyn-Quellen, on they went,
And faced with fiery rage the mountain path
Which skirts the barren flanks of Mynyth-Mawr.

Then down the jagged steep there poured a stream—
A meeting stream—the plundering Sassenachs
Encumbered with their spoil, and with the band
Of trembling wretches, stumbling in their bonds.
A sudden halt of the down-pouring flood,—

234

A short recoil,—then a brief, sullen stand,
A battle front with back against the rock,
The prisoners left to swift unreasoning fear,
Flying alike from savage friend and foe.
They fled, to lose their way amongst the rocks,
Or hide in mountain caves, to wander back
In safety with the morning; all but one
Whose beauty was her bane: Bronwen the fair,—
A dainty morsel which the Saxon churl
Who claimed her would not willingly let fall,—
Was hedged about, a prisoner in the grasp
Of a mailed hand, whose fellow flashed on high
A sword that was a-thirst for Cymric blood.
She saw no more but swooned, and to the ground
Drew the fierce caitiff with her falling weight;
Her eyes that closed upon the world beholding
For a last vision Eurien's wrathful face
Beneath his glittering helm and flame-like hair,—
All beautiful and pitiless as death.

That face which seemed to Bronwen's reeling sense
Awful, as of a judge and not a saviour,

235

Was set against a giant, black-browed Saxon,
Whom step by step, and blow by blow, he drave
Home to the rocky rampart at his back,
When, gathering all his might, our chieftain paused
A breathing second, ere with one sheer stroke,
One swift, two-handed stroke of his keen lance,
He shore him through the heart and pinned him there.

The world was shut from Bronwen's sight, but sounds
Of clashing arms and trampling feet still struck
Slow drowsy chords within her lidless ear.
Then Eurien shook his lance from out its sheath
Of quivering flesh, which spouting forth a stream
Of alien blood, befouled her where she lay
Unseen of him,—but lost to fear as hope.
Unseen, albeit he turned as if impelled
By some stern spirit of avenging justice,
And singled warely from the throng of foes
Him who had thought to stain the moon-white shield
Of honour which to him was light of life.
Then they two fought; the Saxon dog, whose brain

236

Was maddened with his two-fold fires of lust,
Leaping at Eurien's throat in fierce despite,
Struck at his face as fain to mar the image
Bared in proud scorn of battle's worst affronts.
In vain he struck; our chieftain's proven brand
Received upon its guard that wasteful charge
Of currish fury; till with eye as keen
As was his sword's fine edge, he seized a moment
Of vantage, and up-risen in his stirrups,
Dealt down upon the helm of his base foe
A hail of blows his arm drove home as straight
And strong as hammer strokes, and so unhorsed him,
Bleeding with many wounds, to fall back ghastly,
A corpse beside the senseless form of Bronwen.

Then shutting out this sight from Eurien's eyes,
There rose a mighty breast and strong armed hand,
Likewise unseen of him the while his gaze
Sought a new victim. In that perilous hour
Our chieftain's life, whose costliness had grown
From noble service in victorious cause,
Had perished but for Wythan; he whose lance
By foeman's fall that moment had been freed,

237

Now launched it with the swift and fiery force
Of menaced love against that steel-clad breast
Throbbing with the vain-glorious desire
Of cutting off the days so dear to Glyneth.
The weapon reached its mark; the minion fell;
It struck, but did not pierce; it glanced aside;
And entered at a tenderer port than that
Whereto it had been sent.

A woman's cry,
A sudden cry as of a soul sent forth
In pain upon the eternal, pathless wild;
White arms thrown upwards, then a gasping sob,
And silence. Bronwen's crooked race was run.

Our chieftain heard the cry, and saw the fair
Dead image first between the trampling feet,
And gripped his sword yet harder, and fought on;
Yet fought not now as Eurien, only fought
As some unconscious vessel where the blood
Of fighting sires was stored, and could arise,
Leap of its own blind motion to his arm,
And prompt his hand to give back blow for blow.
His some-time wife lay dead before his face,

238

Slain here beneath the smoking walls of Havod;
He stopped to ask no question e'en of thought;
He knew why she was here; he grasped the even
Clue of her life; saw through the smooth subservience
Wherewith her spirit ever at the threshold
Of lip and eye had met him; felt he never
Had reached the shallows of her heart and brain
To make them flow with his in one clear current;
Then laying round him like a man who seeks
To build a monument of his revenge,
And so appease the manes of one who goes
Unhonoured and unwept the way of doom,
She past from out his heart with all her wiles,
And left it proud and free as was his life.

But soft! a pang more keen than that cold parting
Cleaves the firm soul of Eurien; the boy,
His son and hers,—his little five months child,—
How came she here without him? Is he gone,
He too to join that shadow on its way,
He too to glorify her unwept grave?
He seeks the babe beside her, as he spurns
The ghastly head, stamped with a dying curse,

239

From the white pillow of her arm; then leaps
From out the press of the now flying Saxons,
Throwing a word to Wythan as he goes:
‘Be this your charge!’ he points to that fair piece
Of woman's flesh, then bending to the pommel,
He drives his spurs deep in his charger's flanks,
And hard against the hill the ringing hoofs
And scattered stones proclaim how Eurien rides
When Eurien's soul is pressed by love and dole.

The Saxons save themselves as save they can,
Winding through pathless gulleys down the steep;
Turning white, dogged faces when o'ertaken
And brought to bay by swifter-footed Cymri;
And many a shout of baffled rage, and groan
Of life gone forth in anguish of defeat,
Wakens the slumbering foxes in their holes,
Then falls to sleep among the silent hills.
And far, and farther as the minutes pass,
The noise of travelling war, and grappling hold
Of hoofs that struggle up the mountain's side,
Are sundered; till, a lonely, foam-flecked horseman,
Eurien draws rein, and lights among the ruins

240

Of blackened Havod,—still, forlorn of life,
The very flames extinct, with half their prey
Left undevoured; dark Havod, belching smoke,
A labyrinth of dim, encumbered ways,
Where a man's erring strength and bootless haste
Might well be wrought to madness.

Lo, a voice,—
Clear, tender, pitiful as is the speech
Of angels who would comfort little children
Passing the lonely gate of death,—a voice
He knew for that which speaking through the cloud
On Crib-y-dysgull had redeemed his life,
And led him forward as the voice of God.
And now it leads him. Eurien hears his name,
Then neither hears, sees, knows, or feels aught more
Until he grasps his child, his gentle babe;
Grasps him with eager hands and tremulous,
Untender with excess of tenderness,
And chafes his silken cheek, soft mouth, and eyes
Closed to the storm, with a wild rain of kisses.
Sweet kisses doubled with the grateful tears
The warrior scorns to shed; sweet face so drowned
Sweet smile of infant peace and child's wise trust

241

Wherewith a babe's bare head, which is of all
Unfended things that be, the most defenceless,
Is laid in deep content upon a heart
Which rocks it with a passion all its own.

O love, whose highest proof is still thy patience!
Pity that overflows to meet all sorrow!
Behold ye now thrown back upon your source,
To rise as rise the waters of a fountain,
To rise, and spread, and compass widowed Eurien,
Holding him glorified within your midst,—
No higher, purer light shines from the stars
Which look upon this meeting, than the light
Now shed upon him through the eyes that feed
Their sight with a lost image which no tear
Would dare to blur.

And Eurien in that moment
Knows that his infant's head is safely shrined
Upon that heart whereto the harried hare
Had fled for refuge, as to some known altar
Reared in a chosen temple of high God.
And more than this: he knows that that white maid
Who loomed so largely through the mist, and this

242

On whose frail limbs the smell and smoke of fire
Still linger, is the same brave, earth-clad soul,
No fleshless spirit unassailable,
But Mona as she was,—the highest dweller
Upon the earth, but still on earth a dweller,—
Rapt from their undiscerning, dull, brute gaze,
And hidden somewhere in the heart of nature,
Till they should hail her with the hearts of men;—
Mona, his sister once, his slave, his plaything,
Marked for his bride, then mourned for dead, then risen
As rise the dead within the hearts that love them,
And leading him still living, as the dead
Will lead, for ever lead, the hearts that love them,
The way of heaven, of glory, and of God.

No word to shake the stillness of the night,—
The clear, keen, breathless, silent, listening night,—
No question seeking answer e'en of thought;
She was to him so pure and blest a thing,
It had not seemed too strange if angel hands
Had caught her where she fell.

O spreading arms,—
Strong, supple arms, fruited, and many-fingered

243

With autumn leafage,—ye that were upraised
To Clogwyn Cromlech on that direful eve
When Mona's heavy heart and light girl limbs
Dropt from the sheer rock's crown, and were received
Within you, I, Glân-Alarch, even I,
Who love her only with an old man's love,
Shall watch you when the season's change is swelling
The sheaths of coming blossoms, to surprise
Some sign of joy beyond your yearly wont,
Some flowers that are as flowers of paradise,
Some fruit that bursts with promise all divine,
To credit you the ministers of heaven.

No word betwixt the two when Eurien kneels
Prone on the ground her bare white feet make holy,
And lays his lips upon the dewy hem
That sweeps the earth, and bends his conquering brow—
As heavy with its weight of reverent joy,
Or humbled by the glory of the image
Of Eurien's self as seen in Mona's eyes.

The calm, sweet rule of worship held him fast
A moment, then there stirred within his heart

244

Familiar voices, tones of love and home,
The cumulative tenderness of years;
He sought her eyes, he clasped her trembling knees,
She was again his sister, no immortal,
His lost, his valiant Mona, whose great heart
Was ever set to tasks that overbore
The feebler flesh. He started to his feet,
The brother all alive, the brother's love
Quickened by loss and sorrow; in his arms
He took her with the child, the little son
She brought him from the dead, and folded her
Close in a home of refuge whose sure title
Lay locked within the past.

Then there arose
Betwixt the twain a presence which was other
Than of the child; a sudden flame of joy
Their meeting breath had kindled; quickened fire
Of life in every nerve, that seemed to shape them
To a new consciousness of being,—a knowledge
Within them of a form divine, with power
To give eternal gladness. Eye to eye
They held each other fast above the head
Of sleeping innocence, while beating heart

245

To beating heart answered through that soft bar.
A moment still they trembled on the verge,
Then lip to lip declined, and plunged their spirits
Deep in the fathomless joy of the first kiss
This twain had ever kissed as man and woman;
A joy as wild as fire, more pure than snow,
Unstained, keen, absolute, as flawless light.

Thou Earth that art a star among the stars
Which make the army of the heavenly King,
And art obedient to His sovereign word
As is the goodliest servant in His host,
Dost thou not burn amid them as a sun,
When love, triumphant as the love of these,
Leaps into life unquenchable, unborrowed
From any sphere, and only born of God?

A moment—now I pause to thank Thee, God,
That wrath of men still passes like the smoke
Which wanes above the cooling stones of Havod,
While moments such as these have scope eternal—
A moment and the woman yields her weakness
As if it were itself some inmost joy,—

246

The bitter-sweet, shy kernel of this fair,
Fresh fruit of life they taste together first,—
Yields it and is enclosed, upheld by him
Whose arms to her—strong with a new-born power—
Are as a god's. Nay, I would pass from hence
But cannot forth, and needs must linger still.
I, old Glân-Alarch, weak, and dead to love,
Am caught as in the current of its stream,
Am kept as in the valley of its wave;
I who love joy, I cannot choose but linger
Where joy is rife in hearts so near mine own.
Back, back ye tears that come in lieu of words!
Mona the dead has waked to blessed life,
Mona the wandering ghost has found a home,
Mona the waif now lies in joyful prison
Of Eurien's arms. She, as an outcast lonely,
Has grown to be a virgin mother, loved
Of him who owns the service of all hearts;
She who went forth unknown has been revealed;
She for whose gentle life a pit was digged
Has come again with, on her mortal face,
The lingering glory of the blessed dead!

247

Now costly moment of recovered right,
And fruited joy by sorrow perfected,
Pass from my page as from the book of Time:
Your memory is blent with that high hope
And larger triumph of victorious arms
Which makes my latest wine of life the best,
And, like a fragrant flower dropped in the cup,
Will savour all the draught unto the end!

So but a moment of our time, the twain
Had met and mixed their being, and I know not
And think they knew not justly, if a word
Had spoken been betwixt them, when the maiden
Drew the light shape that had so lately parted
The flames in fearless quest of Eurien's son
From Eurien's arms; and, filled with thoughts of pity
For the dead woman, slain as she had seen her,
And lying as she knew beneath her feet
In dire exchange of place, she from her bosom
Took the still sleeping babe, and trembling all
With the sweet tumult of her own young passion
And the yet sweeter dread of his, she laid him—

248

A bulwark to embay the rising tempest—
Safe on his father's outstretched hands—and left him.

She turned and set her gleaming face and feet
Towards Garth; then stood a moment on the brow
Of Havod bryn; there paused, and turned again
With wafting hand which signed for him to follow,
Keeping that space betwixt them; then she sunk
From off the hill, and took a way as trackless
Amongst the cloven rocks, the broom and heather,
As that of birds which skim the autumn clouds.

And Eurien followed, holding by the rein
His wearied steed, and close upon his heart
The child whose precious weight was all too light
To still its beating; and she led him on,
Away from that dark scene of blood and death,
Whence Wythan bore the ruined form of Bronwen
To lay within her ruined walls of Havod.

So in the radiant twilight of the stars
He followed, nothing doubting, those sure feet
Which led him down the steep and up the slope,

249

And—where it beamed upon him from the dusk
Field of the wintry gorse—her face, which shone
White as the lily's shine when all less pure
Is swallowed of the night. So on and on
Until above the hills the morning broke,
And Garth, the highest house upon the hills,
Was touched with sudden glory, which they pressed
Onwards to reach.

Then, 'neath the waning stars
And rising sun we met,—those three returning
In unattended triumph, with the signs
Of deadly rage of battle, and of fire
On clothes and hair,—and we, Modwyth and I,
The old dumb Bard, and Methuen with the harp,
The friend of olden days who shared my silence,—
Met on the way we trod in restless anguish
In search of Bronwen and the babe.

Oh, joy,
That dared not cry aloud for death was near!
I think I too had died that hour, nor lingered
To see the sun of Eurien and of Wales
Risen and shining, shining through the clouds,
Kindling anew the embers of my life,

250

If in that hour my joy that was forbid
The common speech of men had found no relic,
No poor remainder of the song that used
In olden days to burst from my full heart
And ease it of its rapture or its pain.

I seized my harp, and from its triple strings
Wrung forth an answer to my fourfold joy.
The long-imprisoned silent soul of music
Trembled beneath the fury of my quest,
Yet bravely in the hearing of the hills
Gave forth its witness. It was all too weak,
The burthen laid upon its chords too great;
My heart leapt up within me, and fled forth
Breaking the seal of silence on my lips,
And high above the heads of all the hills
I lifted up my voice, and to the sun
New-risen in the heaven, and to the stars
That fell before his face, I told my tale:
The wicked had not triumphed: I might sing
God was not overthrown: and so I sung:

251

Break, break, O daybeams, and kindle our beacon-hills!
Vault o'er our valleys and meet our wild waves;
Foam of the breaker, and flash of our mountain-rills,
Bear our high tidings o'er rocks and through caves.

Water the roots of our hills out of sight, O rills,
Deepen their hold on the heart of the earth;
While ye stand fast looking up to the light, O hills,
Sons strong to guard you shall press to the birth.

Pure are our springs as they fresh from their fountains burst,
Only the waters of Severn are red;
None of our Cymri will waken in bonds accurst,—
None but the eagle and vulture are fled.

Where is the eagle that rose when the morning first
Called to him? Gone to that river so red,
Dipping his gory wing, quelling his raging thirst,
Hot from his feast on the Sassenach dead.

Deep lies the earth on the breasts of our fallen ones,
Hidden from scorn and the sight of our eyes,
Keeping still watch on the banks where the river runs,
Dumbly rebuking the voice of our sighs.

252

Safe thou, our Head, in the crown of thy martyrdom
Proud, for the ‘bleeding heart’ fails not, nor faints;
Live thou our witness and sign for all days to come,—
Teudric the saint, and avenger of saints!

Live thou our Head where the light of the Holy One
Falls on the face we behold from afar;
Bound by thy rule as the spheres by the blessed sun,
Led through the night of our doom by thy star.

Break, break, O daybeams, and kindle our beacon-hills,
Vault o'er our valleys and meet our wild waves;
Foam of the breaker, and flicker of mountain-rills,
Bear our young hope over rocks and through caves.

Water the roots of our hills day and night, O rills,
Strengthen them, nourish and sweeten the ground,
While ye stand fast looking up to the light, O hills,
Sons hero-hearted will ring ye around.

Hail to thee, Eurien! Lift up thine eagle-head,
Pure to the daybeams the gold of thy crest,—
Pure as the Colwyn that flows to its marriage-bed,
Pure as the blossom that sleeps on thy breast.

253

Hail to thee, virgin,—white champion of innocence,—
Armed by the dews of the night as you came,
Cleaving the deadly reek, bearing our treasure thence,
Giving the lie to the false tongues of flame.

Hail to ye, man, woman, child,—the elected three
Charged with God's lightnings of love and of death;
Three to the sword, to the pit, and the flame were ye,—
One to our hope, and our fierier faith!

Teudric to stand for us, shine for us day and night
Sheer in God's face with our wrongs and our woes,
Ye for the rod of His hand, in his guiding light
Breaking the backs of our pitiless foes.

Strong blows a breath as the wind on that midmost sea
Bearing the tall ships that tremble and groan,
Sweeping them onward as now that wind sweepeth me,
Driving them forth on a course not their own;—

Strong blows the breath and it taketh me, lifteth me
Upward and onward, I struggle in vain,—
Taketh me, showeth me what mine eyes die to see,—
Teareth forth words from the heart of my pain.

254

Not by the tongues of the earth shall the victory
Claimed be for us when the last field is won;
Not by the watchers below shall the triumph be
Laid to our door when the long day is done:—

Fold not the flag, from the sheath pluck the weapon free,
Edge it,—as sheath ye will want it no more;
Stand up like men, ay, though God were not there to see,—
Strike for the right as the waves for the shore.

Strike for the right though the wrong shall ride over you,
Fall, if ye fall, with the sword in your hand;
So shall your blood and your tears be a morning dew
Worthy to blend with the life of the land!

So shall ye strengthen your souls for the latter spring,
Pouring them out as the cloud pours the rain,—
Giving them back for the heart of the earth to bring
Nearer to God as a fountain again.

255

Lost though ye be to all other than God alone,
Never your shape to His eye shall grow dim,
Never His ear from the harmony lose the tone
Taught the sad secret of music by Him.

So in the far time, when spoiler and spoiled shall stand
One in the face and the front of the world,
Sudden a cry from the deep shall surprise the land
Low in the dust when oppression is hurled.

So in the far time when spoiler and spoiled shall be
One as the blood mixed in war and in peace,
Sweetening their rough wine of song shall our threnody
Steal through the world to its music's increase.

So in the far time when spoiler and spoiled forlorn
Watch by the altars whose light burneth dim,
We with the younger heart left to earth's earlier born
Still in the darkness shall lift up the hymn,

Pour out the prayer and the praise that abide in us
Still when the stars in their courses are mute;
Words with a meaning forgotten that hide in us,—
Breath as of God that still lives in His flute;

256

Bow in our worshipful need to the God that lies
Lost in the wilds and the wastes of the earth,
Till with a rush as of flame every soul shall rise
One to the Godhead that gave it its birth.

Great is the will of the Highest, and great are we,
Ripening in darkness as seed in the womb,
Great is the God of our trust, and His children we,
Treading to music the dark way of doom.

THE END.