Gwynedd
The children of the mingling mists: can they,
Born by the melancholy hills, love thee,
Royal and joyous light? From dawn of day,
We watch the trailing shadows of the waste,
The waste moors, or the ever-mourning sea:
What, though in speedy splendour thou hast raced
Over the heather or wild wave, a ray
Of travelling glory and swift bloom? Still thou
Inhabitest the mighty morning's brow:
And hast thy flaming and celestial way,
Afar from our sad beauties, in thine haste.
Have thou thy circling triumph of the skies,
Horseman of Goldwhite Footsteps! Yet all fire
Lives not with thee: for part is in our eyes,
Beholding the loved beauty of cold hills:
And part is patron of dear home desire,
Flashing upon the central hearth: it fills
Ingle and black-benched nook with radiances,
Hearts with responding spirit, ears with deep
Delicious music of the ruddy leap,
And streaming strength, and kindling confluences:
The hearth glows, and the cavernous chimney thrills.
Pale with greaTheat, panting to crimson gloom,
Quiver the deeps of the rich fire: see there!
Was not that your fair face, in burning bloom
Wrought by the art of fire? O happy art!
That sets in living flames a face so fair:
The face, whose changes dominate mine heart,
And with a look speak my delight or doom:
Nay, now not doom, for I am only thine,
And one in thee and me the fire divine!
The fire, that wants the whole vast world for room:
Yet dwells in us contented and apart.
The flames' red dance is done: and we crouch close
With shadowy faces to the dull, red glow.
Your darkling loveliness is like the rose,
Its dusky petals, and its bower of soft
Sweet inner darkness, where the dew lies low:
And now one tongue of flame leaps up aloft,
Brightening your brows: and now it fails, and throws
A play of flushing shadows, the rich mist
Of purple grapes, that many a sun hath kissed;
The delicate darkness, that with autumn grows
On red ripe apples in a mossy croft.
Nay! leave such idle southern imageries,
Vineyard and orchard, flowers and mellow fruit:
Great store is ours of mountain mysteries.
Look, where the embers fade, from ruddy gold
Into gray ashes falling without bruit!
Yet is that ruddy lustre bought and sold,
Elf with elf trafficking his merchandise:
Deep at the strong foot of the eagles' pass,
They store the haunting treasure, and amass
The spirit of dead fire: there still it lies,
Phantom wealth, goodlier than Ophir old.
Across the moor, over the purple bells,
Over the heather blossom, the rain drives:
Art fired enough to dare the blowing fells,
And ford the brawling brooks? Ah, come we then!
Great good it is to see, how beauty thrives
For desolate moorland and for moorland men;
To smell scents, rarer than soft honey cells,
From bruised wild thyme, pine bark, or mouldering peat;
To watch the crawling gray clouds drift, and meet
Midway the ragged cliffs. O mountain spells,
Calling us forth, by hill, and moor, and glen!
Calling us forth, to be with earth again,
Her memories, her splendours, her desires!
The fires of the hearth are fallen: now the rain
Stirs its delight of waters, as the flame
Stirred its delight of heat and spirited fires.
Come! by the lintel listen: clouds proclaim,
That thunder is their vast voice: the winds wane,
That all the storm may gather strength, and strive
Once more in their great breath to be alive;
And fill the angry air with such a strain,
As filled the world's war, when the world first came.
Desolate Cornwall, desolate Brittany,
Are up in vehement wind and vehement wave:
Ancient delights are on their ancient sea,
And nature's violent graces waken there;
And there goes loveliness about the grave,
And death means dreaming, not life's long despair.
Our sister lands are they, one people we,
Cornwall desolate, Brittany desolate,
And Wales: to us is granted to be great:
Because, as winds and seas and flames are free,
We too have freedom full, as wild and rare.
And therefore, on a night of heavenly fires;
And therefore, on a windy hour of noon;
Our soul, like nature's eager soul, aspires,
Finding all thunders and all winds our friends:
And like the moving sea, love we the moon;
And life in us the way of nature wends,
Ardent as nature's own, that never tires.
Born of wild land, children of mountains, we
Fear neither ruining earth, nor stormy sea:
Even as men told in Athens, of our sires:
And as it shall be, till the old world ends.
Your eyes but brighten to the streaming wind,
But lighten to the sighing air, but break
To tears before the labouring hills: your mind
Moves with the passionate spirit of the land.
Now crystal is your soul, now flame: a lake,
Proud and calm, with high scaurs on either hand;
Or a swift lance of lightning, to strike blind.
True child of Gwynedd, child of wilds and fields!
To you earth clings, to you strange nature yields
Far learning, sudden light, fierce fire: these find
Home in your heart, and thoughts that understand.
We will not wander from this land; we will
Be wise together, and accept our world:
This world of the gray cottage by the hill,
This gorge, this lusty air, this loneliness:
The calm of drifting clouds; the pine-tops whirled
And swayed along the ridges. Here distress
Dreams, and delight dreams; dreaming, we can fill
All solitary haunts with prophecy,
All heights with holiness and mystery;
Our hearts with understanding, and our will
With love of nature's law and loveliness.
Old voices call, old pleasures lure: for now
The wet earth breathes ancient fair fragrance forth;
And dying gales hang in the branches, blow
And fall, and blow again: our widest home
Is with rich winds of West, loud winds of North,
Sweeping beneath a gray and vasty dome.
Not with the hearth, whose consolations go,
Our home of homes: but where our eyes grow tired
Of straitened joys, with stretching joys are fired:
Joys of the rolling moor and cloudy brow,
Or worn, precipitous bastions of the foam.
Our fires are fallen from their blossoming height,
And linger in sad embers: but gray bloom
Is on the heather, an enchaunting light
Of purple dusk and vesper air: rich rain
Falls on our hearts, through eve and gentle gloom,
More than upon our foreheads. The world's pain
And joy of storm are proven our delight,
And peace enthroned for ever: ours the mirth,
And melancholy of this ancient earth:
Ours are the mild airs and the starred twilight;
And we, who love them, are not all in vain.
Born by the melancholy hills, love thee,
Royal and joyous light? From dawn of day,
We watch the trailing shadows of the waste,
The waste moors, or the ever-mourning sea:
What, though in speedy splendour thou hast raced
Over the heather or wild wave, a ray
Of travelling glory and swift bloom? Still thou
Inhabitest the mighty morning's brow:
And hast thy flaming and celestial way,
Afar from our sad beauties, in thine haste.
Have thou thy circling triumph of the skies,
Horseman of Goldwhite Footsteps! Yet all fire
Lives not with thee: for part is in our eyes,
Beholding the loved beauty of cold hills:
And part is patron of dear home desire,
Flashing upon the central hearth: it fills
Ingle and black-benched nook with radiances,
Hearts with responding spirit, ears with deep
Delicious music of the ruddy leap,
And streaming strength, and kindling confluences:
The hearth glows, and the cavernous chimney thrills.
Pale with greaTheat, panting to crimson gloom,
Quiver the deeps of the rich fire: see there!
Was not that your fair face, in burning bloom
Wrought by the art of fire? O happy art!
That sets in living flames a face so fair:
The face, whose changes dominate mine heart,
And with a look speak my delight or doom:
Nay, now not doom, for I am only thine,
And one in thee and me the fire divine!
The fire, that wants the whole vast world for room:
Yet dwells in us contented and apart.
The flames' red dance is done: and we crouch close
With shadowy faces to the dull, red glow.
Your darkling loveliness is like the rose,
Its dusky petals, and its bower of soft
Sweet inner darkness, where the dew lies low:
And now one tongue of flame leaps up aloft,
Brightening your brows: and now it fails, and throws
A play of flushing shadows, the rich mist
Of purple grapes, that many a sun hath kissed;
The delicate darkness, that with autumn grows
On red ripe apples in a mossy croft.
Nay! leave such idle southern imageries,
Vineyard and orchard, flowers and mellow fruit:
Great store is ours of mountain mysteries.
Look, where the embers fade, from ruddy gold
Into gray ashes falling without bruit!
Yet is that ruddy lustre bought and sold,
Elf with elf trafficking his merchandise:
Deep at the strong foot of the eagles' pass,
They store the haunting treasure, and amass
The spirit of dead fire: there still it lies,
Phantom wealth, goodlier than Ophir old.
Across the moor, over the purple bells,
Over the heather blossom, the rain drives:
Art fired enough to dare the blowing fells,
And ford the brawling brooks? Ah, come we then!
Great good it is to see, how beauty thrives
For desolate moorland and for moorland men;
To smell scents, rarer than soft honey cells,
From bruised wild thyme, pine bark, or mouldering peat;
To watch the crawling gray clouds drift, and meet
Midway the ragged cliffs. O mountain spells,
Calling us forth, by hill, and moor, and glen!
Calling us forth, to be with earth again,
Her memories, her splendours, her desires!
The fires of the hearth are fallen: now the rain
Stirs its delight of waters, as the flame
Stirred its delight of heat and spirited fires.
Come! by the lintel listen: clouds proclaim,
That thunder is their vast voice: the winds wane,
That all the storm may gather strength, and strive
Once more in their great breath to be alive;
And fill the angry air with such a strain,
As filled the world's war, when the world first came.
Desolate Cornwall, desolate Brittany,
Are up in vehement wind and vehement wave:
Ancient delights are on their ancient sea,
And nature's violent graces waken there;
And there goes loveliness about the grave,
And death means dreaming, not life's long despair.
Our sister lands are they, one people we,
Cornwall desolate, Brittany desolate,
And Wales: to us is granted to be great:
Because, as winds and seas and flames are free,
We too have freedom full, as wild and rare.
And therefore, on a night of heavenly fires;
And therefore, on a windy hour of noon;
Our soul, like nature's eager soul, aspires,
Finding all thunders and all winds our friends:
And like the moving sea, love we the moon;
And life in us the way of nature wends,
Ardent as nature's own, that never tires.
Born of wild land, children of mountains, we
Fear neither ruining earth, nor stormy sea:
Even as men told in Athens, of our sires:
And as it shall be, till the old world ends.
Your eyes but brighten to the streaming wind,
But lighten to the sighing air, but break
To tears before the labouring hills: your mind
Moves with the passionate spirit of the land.
Now crystal is your soul, now flame: a lake,
Proud and calm, with high scaurs on either hand;
Or a swift lance of lightning, to strike blind.
True child of Gwynedd, child of wilds and fields!
To you earth clings, to you strange nature yields
Far learning, sudden light, fierce fire: these find
Home in your heart, and thoughts that understand.
We will not wander from this land; we will
Be wise together, and accept our world:
This world of the gray cottage by the hill,
This gorge, this lusty air, this loneliness:
The calm of drifting clouds; the pine-tops whirled
And swayed along the ridges. Here distress
Dreams, and delight dreams; dreaming, we can fill
All solitary haunts with prophecy,
All heights with holiness and mystery;
Our hearts with understanding, and our will
With love of nature's law and loveliness.
Old voices call, old pleasures lure: for now
The wet earth breathes ancient fair fragrance forth;
And dying gales hang in the branches, blow
And fall, and blow again: our widest home
Is with rich winds of West, loud winds of North,
Sweeping beneath a gray and vasty dome.
Not with the hearth, whose consolations go,
Our home of homes: but where our eyes grow tired
Of straitened joys, with stretching joys are fired:
Joys of the rolling moor and cloudy brow,
Or worn, precipitous bastions of the foam.
Our fires are fallen from their blossoming height,
And linger in sad embers: but gray bloom
Is on the heather, an enchaunting light
Of purple dusk and vesper air: rich rain
Falls on our hearts, through eve and gentle gloom,
More than upon our foreheads. The world's pain
And joy of storm are proven our delight,
And peace enthroned for ever: ours the mirth,
And melancholy of this ancient earth:
Ours are the mild airs and the starred twilight;
And we, who love them, are not all in vain.
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