Glan-Alarch His Silence And Song. Book Iii Poem by Emily Pfeiffer

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,
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
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
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,
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,
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,—

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,
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,—

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
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
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
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:

‘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;
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.’

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;
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
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
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.

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,
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,—

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.’

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


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;
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.

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,
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
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,
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
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,
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
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,
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.

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

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.
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.

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;
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
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,
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
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.

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,
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—

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
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.

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.

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,—

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,
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
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,
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,
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,
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
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
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
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
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
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
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,—

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!

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—

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,
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,
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:

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.
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.
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.
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.
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;
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.