Welsh Lyrics of the Nineteenth Century | Page 9

and home of the weak.
Slain is our leader, and he who has slain him,
Prince of the foemen, will reign in his stead.?Fallen our harp with the fall of Caradoc,
Ay! let it fall as he fell and lay dead!?Yet can I look on the field of the slaughter,
God was not mocked, nor was freedom denied.?Better than that 'twas to die--there on Rhuddlan
Better to sink in the free flowing tide.
The Steed of Dapple Grey.
Caradoc calls his warriors,
And loud the bugles blow;?On rushed the brave Silurians,
And fell beneath the foe.?Back shrank his men retreating,
But on her steed of dapple grey?There rides the stately queen that way?Her spouse, Caradoc, meeting.
There's tumult in the dingle,
As sinks the sun o'erhead;?And many a stalwart hero
Lies for his country dead.?One host the waters cover,
But on her steed of dapple grey?There rides the stately queen that day?To seek her royal lover.
Then saw the Romans only
A steed of dapple grey;?But saw the Britons riding
Their stately queen that way.?The bugles sound the rally!
The Britons backward turn--to fight,?The Romans backward reel--in flight,?Before that last grim sally.
A Lullaby.
Sleep, sleep, sleep!?All nature now is steeping?Her sons in sleep,--their eyelids close,?All living things in sweet repose
Are sleeping, sleeping.
Sleep, baby, sleep!?Peace o'er thee watch be keeping,?If from my bosom thou art torn,?Low in the grave I'll lie forlorn,
Sleeping, ah, sleeping.
ISLWYN.
William Thomas was born April 3, 1832, and very early showed signs of poetic talent. He published a volume of poems, 'Caniadau Islwyn' (Messrs. Hughes & Son, Wrexham), about 1867, some of the finest pieces in which, including "Thought" and "The Vision and Faculty Divine," are extracted from a long poem "The Storm," which has never yet been published. A complete edition of his works is now in the press. He died Nov. 20, 1878.
Night.
Come, Night, with all thy train?Of witnesses. I love?The stars' deep eloquence,?That with the morning hours?Grows mute again.?Thy stillness cries to human sense,?"There is a God above,?And worlds more fair than ours."?The day is night which hides the stars from sight!?Our night for day is given?To make more plain the path to heaven.
It is the Sun?That at its rising makes the infidel,?And all day long the world alone?Its tale can tell.?Oh welcome, Night, that bid'st the world be still,?That through the stars eternity may speak.?Too early, Dawn, too early dost thou wake:?Too early climbest up the Eastern hill:?Too early! stay: so quiet is the Night,?And in her pensive breeze such sympathy,?She shows us suns that suffer no eclipse,?O'er which the grave's dark shadow ne'er can lie.?Nay! come not yet, O Dawn: thy laughing lips,?Thy wanton glance, and frolic songs of glee,?The convocation of those holier spheres profane,?And when night vanishes, heaven is hid again.
Come, balmy Night! O peaceful hours,?When on its axis sleeps the untiring wheel,?And from this loud-voiced world of ours?No taint of earth can on the breezes steal.
The weary sailor, when time's tempests rage,?Joys when he sees, on the far shores of heaven,?The fiery line of stars, as beacons given?To guide him to the eternal anchorage.
The Vision and the Faculty Divine.
When it will, it comes,?Like the rain or the bow?Or the nightingale's lay?By the lake below:?As free from restraint as the seraph that roams?O'er the ebbing waves of the dying day,?When the reddening west, 'twixt the sun and the sea,?Seems to open the door of eternity.
When it will, it comes,?Like the stars that are driven?O'er the cloudwrack riven.?When it will--to the world it owes no debt,?No times, no seasons for it are set.?When it will--like all that belongs to heaven.
Not so the sea?That hath its laws and rules and door:
Whose ebb and whose flow?In the ears of men beat evermore,
Like time's great pendulum to and fro.?And the time of whose visits is known long before?As it rolls to the moment from shore to shore.
Not so the sun,?Time's fountain and head,?Whose shadows to hours and minutes creep,?As into their fold the gathering sheep.?The Alps, in their garb of eternal snow--?So far from the world they grow white with dread--
The moment know?When from the East's ever darkening sea?He will rise--the image of Deity.?And the birds, the same moment awaking, blow?The world's great trumpet that men may know
That night hath fled,?And day is risen again from the dead.
Like the rainbow it comes--?As the sign of the covenant made long ago?'Twixt Godhood and thought, when, abating its flow,?The sea of eternity brought into sight?Time's far distant mountains, and safe on their height?There rested, by God to humanity brought,?The Ark of eternal, immutable Thought!
Thought.
We are not certain that the mighty soul?Doth err, when far above the narrow groove?In which man walks from childhood to the grave?It rises, murmuring things unutterable,?And spurns as lies the outward forms of sense,?And, like a shooting star, enfranchised seeks?The spaces of eternity.
Hath not?The soul a hidden story of its own,?A tide of mysteries breaking on a far?And distant shore, where memory