The Poetry of Wales | Page 3

for competition are for the
most part patriotic, but religion and loyalty are supreme throughout the
eisteddfod. The successful competitors are crowned or decorated by the
fair hands of lady patronesses, who distribute the prizes. This yearly
gathering of the rank, beauty, wealth and talent of the Principality, to
commemorate their nationality and foster native genius, edified and
delighted by the gems of Welsh oratory, music and song, cannot but be
a laudable institution as well as pleasant recreation. Some of the
foremost English journals, who devote columns of their best narrative
talent to record a horse race, a Scottish highland wrestle, or hideous
prize fight with all their accompaniments of vice and brutality, may
surely well spare the ridicule and contempt with which they visit the
pleasant Welsh eisteddfod. Their shafts, howsoever they may irritate
for the time, ought surely not to lower the Welshman's estimate of his
eisteddfod, seeing the antiquity of its origin, the praiseworthiness of its
objects, the good it has done, the talent it has developed,--as witness, a
Brinley Richards and Edith Wynne,--and the delight it affords to his
country people. Enveloped in the panoply of patriotism, truth and
goodness, he may well defy the harmless darts of angry criticism and
invective, emanating from writers who are foreign in blood, language,
sympathy and taste. When the Greeks delighted in their olympic games
of running for a laurel crown, the Romans witnessed with savage
pleasure the deadly contentions of their gladiators, the Spaniards gazed
with joy on their bloody bull fights, and the English crowded to look at
the horse race or prize fight, the Cymry met peaceably in the recesses
of their beautiful valleys and mountains to rehearse the praises of
religion and virtue, to sing the merits of beauty, truth and goodness,
and all heightened by the melodious strains of their national lyre.
It is often asked, what is poetry? Prose, we assume to be a simple or
connected narrative of ordinary facts or common circumstances. Poetry,
on the other hand, is a grouping of great, grand or beautiful objects in
nature, or of fierce, fine or lofty passions, or beautiful sentiments, or
pretty ideas of the human heart or mind, and all these premises
expressed in suitable or becoming language. Poetry is most indulged in

the infancy of society when nature is a sealed book, and the uneducated
mind fills creation with all sorts of beings and phantoms. There is then
wide scope for the rude imagination to wander at will through the
unknown universe, and to people it with every description of mythical
beings and superstitious objects. Poetry is most powerful in the infancy
of civilization, and enjoys a license of idea and language which would
shock the taste of more advanced times. The Hindustani poetry as
furnished by Sir William Jones, that of the Persian Hafiz, the early
ballads of the Arabians, Moors and Spaniards, the poems of Ossian,
besides the primitive Saxon ballads, and the triads of Wales, all
indicate the extravagant imagery and rude license of poetry in the early
ages of society. The history of those several nations also attests the
magical influence of their early poetry upon the peoples. We find that
Tallifer the Norman trouvere, who accompanied William to the
invasion of England, went before his hosts at Hastings, reciting the
Norman prowess and might, and flung himself upon the Saxon phalanx
where he met his doom. We read that the example of the trouvere
aroused the Norman hosts to an enthusiasm which precipitated them
upon the Saxon ranks with unwonted courage and frenzy. We also find
that the Welsh bard always accompanied his prince to battle, and
rehearsed in song the ancient valour and conquests of the chieftain and
army in front of the enemy.
The progress of philosophy and science dissipates the myths and
spectres of the poetical creation, just as the advance of a July sun
dispels the mist and cloud which hung over the earlier hours of day and
veiled the mountains and valleys from the eye of man. Poetry becomes
now shorn of its greatest extravangancies and wildest flights, instead of
soaring with the eagle to the extremities of space, it flies like the falcon
within human sight. In lieu of a Homer, a Shakespeare and a Milton,
we have a Pope, a Thomson and a Campbell.
The poetry of Wales may be classified into six parts, viz.: the sublime,
the beautiful, the patriotic, the humourous, the sentimental and
religious. Much of the poetry of the Principality consists of the first
class, and is specially dedicated to description and praise of the
Supreme Being, the universe and man. As the great objects of creation,

like the sun and moon, the planetary world and stars first attract the
attention of man and always enlist