The imperishable mind; in every change,
Through the great circle of progressive life,
He guides and guards, till evil shall be known,
And being known as evil, cease to be;
And the pure soul, emancipate by Death,
The Enlarger, shall attain its end predoomed,
The eternal newness of eternal joy.
He left this lofty theme; he struck the harp
To Owen's praise, swift in the course of wrath,
Father of Heroes. That proud day he sung,
When from green Erin came the insulting host,
Lochlin's long burthens of the flood, and they
Who left their distant homes in evil hour,
The death-doomed Normen. There was heaviest toil,
There deeper tumult, where the dragon race
Of Mona trampled down the humbled head
Of haughty power; the sword of slaughter carved
Food for the yellow-footed fowl of heaven,
And Menai's waters, burst with plunge on plunge, Curling above their banks with tempest-swell
Their bloody billows heaved.
Came on the mind of Madoc, as he heard
The song of triumph; on his sun-burnt brow
Sate exultation: . . other thoughts arose,
As on the fate of all his gallant house
Mournful he mused; oppressive memory swelled
His bosom, over his fixed eye-balls swam
The tear's dim lustre, and the loud-toned harp
Rung on his ear in vain; its silence first
Roused him from dreams of days that were no more.
THEN on the morrow, at the banquet board,
The Lord of Ocean thus began his tale.
My heart beat high when with the favouring wind
We sailed away; Aberfraw! when thy towers,
And the huge headland of my mother isle,
Shrunk and were gone.
But, Madoc, I would learn,
Quoth David, how this enterprise arose,
And the wild hope of worlds beyond the sea;
For at thine outset being in the war,
I did not hear from vague and common fame
The moving cause. Sprung it from bardic lore,
The hidden wisdom of the years of old,
Forgotten long? or did it visit thee
In dreams that come from heaven?
Thou shalt hear all; . . but if, amid the tale,
Strictly sincere, I haply should rehearse
Aught to the king ungrateful, let my brother
Be patient with the involuntary fault.
I was the guest of Rhys at Dinevawr,
And there the tidings found me, that our sire
Was gathered to his fathers: .. not alone
The sorrow came; the same ill messenger
Told of the strife that shook our royal house,
When Hoel, proud of prowess, seized the throne
Which you, for elder claim and lawful birth,
Challenged in arms. With all a brother's love,
I on the instant hurried to prevent
The impious battle: . . all the day I sped,
Night did not stay me on my eager way. . .
Where'er I passed, new rumour raised new fear...
Midnight, and morn, and noon I hurried on,
And the late eve was darkening when I reached
Arvon, the fatal field. . . The sight, the sounds,
Live in my memory now, • •
for all was done!
For horse and horseman side by side in death,
Lay on the bloody plain; . . a host of men,
And not one living soul, . . and not one sound,
One human sound, . . only the raven's wing,
Which rose before my coming, and the neigh
Of wounded horses, wandering o'er the plain.
Night now was coming on; a man approached,
And bade me to his dwelling nigh at hand.
Thither I turned, too weak to travel on;
For I was overspent with weariness,
And having now no hope to bear me up,
Trouble and bodily labour mastered me.
I asked him of the battle: .. who had fallen
He knew not, nor to whom the lot of war
Had given my father's sceptre. Here, said he,
I came to seek if haply I might find
Some wounded wretch, abandoned else to death.
My search was vain, the sword of civil war
Had bit too deeply.
Soon we reached his home,
A lone and lowly dwelling in the hills,
By a grey mountain stream. Beside the hearth
There sate an old blind man ; his head was raised As he were listening to the coming sounds,
And in the fire-light shone his silver locks.
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