Classic Poem

CONTAINING THE Poems OF D AVYTH AP G WILYM , " T HE P OET OF THE L EAVES ."

In this Green Book every leaf
Tells his gaiety, or grief,
Who, for love and Morvyth's sake,
Birchen-grove and hazel-brake
Haunted still, wherever she
Led in her shy forestry.

Here's the page tells how he stood
Waiting in the early wood,
Earlier than the summer sun
Drops the dappled rays that run
Thro' the fern like fairy-folk,
Or the squirrel in the oak.

There he stood, beneath the leaves,
Till she came, with silken sleeves,
Till she came — so golden tress'd
That the sungleam from its nest
Seemed to waken ere-its hour,
As lamps may wake a sleepy flower.

Yellow, yellow was her hair.
When their heads together there
Bent so close, it seem'd the broom
Transplanted to the beechen gloom:
For his hair was yellow too,
And fell and rhymed with hers in hue.
Happy rhymer, whose mischance
Was his rapture and romance;
Since 'twas only 'mid the trees
He might drink love's mysteries
At her side, or in her eyes
Find his poet's paradise.

Here it tells, that starrier
Eyes may grow, that are not near;
Passing, star-like, where the sight
Cannot drink them day and night.
Truly wedded they might be
Underneath the beechen tree.
But a wicked dwarf there was,
Bwa-bach, that came, alas!
Crooked as the elder tree,
And broke upon their forestry, —
And paid the law to break the law,
As dwarfs may do. And Davyth saw
Them bear away the destined one,
Ere sung his Prothalamion.
Rarely then might Morvyth come
With the morning, or the hum
Of the moth. The fates so tease
From poets sweeter minstrelsies.

Sweeter songs were never flung
At hard fate, than Davyth sung,
As he waited in the dream
Of her gold's irradiate gleam;
Thinking always that the leaves
Told the rustle of her sleeves;
Sorrowing then, lest never more
She would cross the Ieafy floor
Of the forest where each tree
Sighed a lost felicity.

Every birch tree, every bird
That o'er-sang the forest sward,
Kept his secret, fed his song, —
Feathered arrows for his wrong: —
And their quiver is this book,
Where, if you but truly look,
You shall find some dart that will
Ease the bow of sorrow still.

But, alas! of all he sung,
Only in his ancient tongue,
May its perfect tune be caught.
Here you have, yet have it not,
Like a whistled melody,
When the singer is not by.
Now, my rhyme can never tell
All the Green Book's chronicle: —
Nor, how first in Bangor's choir
On her fell the mystic fire
Thro' the painted panes, and stole
A sun ray for an aureole,
To crown the sudden loveliness
Never to be wholly his.

Never quite to us is brought
All the heav'n of which we thought;
Never quite, that visioned glory
Gave its gold up to the story
Of the Poet of the Leaves.
But his song, the while it grieves
Grows but sweeter to the ear.
Gone his grief this many a year;
But the Green Book keeps his rhyme
Living to the end of time.