Glan-Alarch His Silence And Song. Book I

I am the bard Glân-Alarch, he who sings
Beneath the morning cloud which wraps Crag-Eyrie,
Who basks upon his sun-kiss'd side at noon,
And sleeps with him in silence when his crown—
A beacon fire whose message hath been sped—
Fades on the east where he prolonged the day.
I am Glân-Alarch, he whose day of life
Is likewise hasting to its close, who holds
His course, a waning, lonely light, ere long
To drop as drops the sun,—but in a sea,
If not more silent, one whose murmurous music,
Hath never found a voice in tongue of man,—
And leave his fame to live a twilight hour
Glowing upon the heights he loved to range.

An ancient bard! an eagle who no more
May front the eye of day on outspread wing,
And see the earth's rim rise, while his lone eyrie
Fades in the deepening blue beneath his feet.
An ancient bard! A garden all deflowered,
A wintry tree, whose summer crown of leaves
Is laid in golden fragments at his root;
An ancient bard!—a singer—if a seer,
One whom the vision overtakes like sleep,—
Whose harp a passing sigh can wake to music,
Or but the idle fingers of the wind.
An ancient bard,—my children, have you thought
What that may mean? A poet with the snows
Of time upon his beard and burning lips;
A nightingale whose song is for the rose,
Belated where his rose has ceased to bloom;
A child who in a cave which darkens daylight
And deadens music, wears away his heart,
And struggles to repress the life that throbs
Too rudely for his mouldering house of clay.

But not in sadness will I quench my song;
For joy still lives, if not for old Glân-Alarch,
And pride of strength; what though its fountains rise
From other springs than his,—its droppings reach
Him in his drouth; and there is light in heaven
For him and every poorest thing that breathes;
And bardic fire for me, which, when it burns,
Mine ancient house still glows with deathless youth!

I would it burned more fully; that its flame
Were high, and worthy of its source divine;
Then would I sing of Eurien, then would make
His gracious strength, his valour, and his skill,
His royal rage in combat,—seen alas!
Too often on our fields of civil strife,—
His daily victories with hawk and hound,
His daily largess at the castle gate,
His princely gifts of bracelet and of torque,
The smile which doubles all he gives, and makes
The proud his cheerful debtors;—these, and all
The graces of his mien,—his blue-veined brow,
His wealth of sun-bright hair and amber beard,
His lordly glance, curled lip, and many more
The proud adornings of his golden youth—
These would I make to cling about the name
I love, till Time, himself grown old, should look
Back on young Eurien, and long for light
Like that which glowed upon our ripening world.

The valleys in a circle which an eagle
Upon the quest might gather in his glance,
Are Eurien's; all their short sweet herbage cropped
By Eurien's flocks; the mountain's wooded flanks
And savage moorlands are his hunting grounds;
The hamlets, and the scattered townships, sown
On lake and stream, are peopled with his lieges,
Or those who look for judgment at his hand.
Crag-Eyrie, and the peaks which stand at guard
Around, are Eurien's citadels, and help
His strong right hand to hold his subject realm,
And keep at bay the lawless ones without.
Young Chief of all the region heaving round
Crag-Eyrie, lord of lands and lives of men,
Lord of his wild rock castle, and himself,
He gave me shelter when the fierce red wave
Of war had wasted all that once I owned,
A home, and four brave sons who bore it up.

A youth, he held me out a filial hand
And raised me from the dust where I had died;
He smiled upon me, and I thought at whiles
My youngest born looked comfort through his eyes.
He brought me here; he set his roof above
My faint, bleached head, and bound my falling hairs
With golden wreaths of honours; by his hearth
My place was warm, and when he called a council,
My chair was set at Eurien's right hand.

What could I do for Eurien but live—
Cede him the worthless life that he had saved?
Stand for him yet awhile on the bleak rise,—
The 'vantage-ground of sorrowful old age,—
And shout him warnings from the troublous past;
Or turn when he is sad, and with a hope
More young than his—the Child's, the poet's hope,—
Lift up his heart again, and lead him on
To greatly win,—perchance more greatly lose.

When I should else bewail me that I know
No longer that high strain of fierce endeavour
Which swells the heart of manhood in its prime:
The hand to hand encounter with the foe,
The strong-armed contest with the briny wave,
The duel with some monster of the chase—
Danger and glory in all forms which give
The throb of scores of days of life in one—
Making a cycle of a span of time,—
Then with a sigh I shake my spirit free
And stand at guard, or charge with Eurien,
Or plunge and spurn with him the caverned wave,
Or face with him the fierce, death-breathing bear,
And know a joy of triumph in his 'vantage
Which overflows my lips while his are silent.

But when mine ancient harp of life is swept
To subtler issues, when there comes a breath
Blowing I know not whence, that even now,
Slow-footed, dim of sight, I sigh again
To drink sweet poison, and to die from out
The world of shock and contest, and arise
To taste the double life of angels, then
I let my fancy free to soar with Mona;
And from her eyes, and hovering wild bird motions,
Whose centre is in Eurien, I still catch
The self-less ecstacy she knows as love.

She came to us across the Irish sea,
Beyond the rampart mountains, where we trace them,
Faint films upon the mellow evening sky.
The daughter of an Eric chief, whose blood

Reddened the ruin of the ninth sea wave
As it slid over to its fall, and washed
The coming feet of Cadwan, who had gone
With his bold bands to aid a desperate cause
Against marauding Vikings. She, a child,
Houseless and friendless by this chance of war,
Was snatched by Cadwan as we snatch a dog
Forsaken, or a lamb left motherless
Upon the hills, and carried o'er the seas
To Mona. There she dwelt—a cumbrous toy
To rough but not unkindly nurses; thence
She brought the name she bears among us still.

A day had dawned on Eurien's mother Modwyth
When earth and sky were dark; slow death had torn
A daughter from her widowed hold,—a maiden
As fair as Eurien's younger self, when seen—
As once upon a summer noon we saw him—
Doubled in Quellen Lake. For this bright vision
The tear-dimmed eyes of Modwyth were a-weary
When first they lit on Mona, sent by Cadwan,
Her kinsman, in the hope to ease her pain.
A scared, white, bloodless elf had Mona seemed
In these first days; alack, the child had seen,
Heard, felt, and all but tasted gory death;
What marvel if the beatings manifold
Of the young heart, had robbed the starveling veins?

Our lady Modwyth took the maid, and sought,
To tame and teach her household works and ways;
Took her to home and heart; nay, scarce to heart,
She did not love at first those pleading eyes
Startled and strange, that lit the wan, peaked face
Beneath the pent-house brow, and dusky shade
Of wilful hair, and gazed at her where late
Her buried darling, Eurien's sister, lay
A fading glory all of gold and pearl.
Still she was pitiful, and gave the child
The best of all she had that was not love,—
Shelter, and cheer, and council; that ere long
Those seeking eyes grew deep and still with trust.

But when they turned on Eurien as he came,
A royal stripling, from some mountain course,
Fresh from the day-light and the salt sea breath,
Tossing aside his golden-threaded hair,
Stretching his limbs in calm, luxurious rest,
Reaching one patron hand to stroke her head,
The other to the hound which from her side
Uprose to lay her litter at his feet,—
Then Mona's eyes grew deeper yet, and blue,
Bluer than blue Glas-lynn when bluest air
Veils it from him who gazes from Crib-Coch,
And still and patient as some watchful star
Which lights us from the furthest depths of space.

There fell a day which stands a day apart,
Unlike the common throng of those which make,
Not mark, the life of age; a day of doom
To one, of grief to all of Eurien's house;
A day of days, which, spite its rueful end,
Hath left its blazon fair no less than foul.

Swift messengers from Eurien had gone forth
On foot and horse, at earliest dawn, to call
A council which should meet in hall at noon,
To give award of judgment, and of aid,
For Eurien's vengeance on an ancient foe.

Some men, the elders, or the graver spirits
Of those who owed him service, Eurien thought
To summon in his radiant person, charge
With his free tongue; so bid me to his side
To bear him company upon the way.

Our chief was wroth; his forehead cleft with lines
Which made his sombre brows to meet as one,
And caused his visage, else so frank and fair,
To bear the threatening semblance of a cross.

We walked in silence, drawing deeper breath
Of purer air, and shaking from our feet
The dust of lower earth at every step.
We clomb in silence; over land and sea
O'er mountain peak and jagged side, there hung
A luminous mist, and from the valleys seethed
A meeting stream of vapour, boiling up
And breaking into flakes about our feet.
We rose in silence; so we gained the ridge
Swept by the icy breath of Moel-Wythfa,
Whereon those vapoury billows, lashed and torn,—
Precipitated by the driving winds—

We seemed to hold our course amidst dumb breakers,
In silence, on a silent, hungry sea.
I think that Eurien's eyes of welkin blue
Saw little of that wild, phantasmal scene,
The dread abysses which perplexed the sense,
When suddenly the wind-pierced mist was rent,
And mountain streams that bubbled in the coombs
Far down below, laughed brightly in our beards;
Or rocks surged up, and chasms yawned, where late
That sea had foamed at us in voiceless rage.
He seemed to feel that tight-clenched hand of his,—
Tenacious in its grip as some fair shell,—
Close on his foeman's throat, and his firm foot
Fall heavy as the huge black Arthu's stone,
Crushing the stubborn neck of Cynorac's pride.

The ridge that had been was a ridge no more;
The misty ocean, open to the right,
Was closed upon the left by shelving rocks
Which cast their purple shadows on its face.
We trod the wild rock path in silence still,
The sun above us, we above the steam
Which filled the gaping cauldrons of the coombs;
He listening to his wrath, I to the lark
That tried to sing the fog from out his throat.
And as I listened thus, I heard a song
Which mocked me with an echo, here, and there,
Sounding now near, now far, but growing still,
Larger upon the lightening mountain air:
A hymn in which the lark's clear-gushing joy
Was married to a mood which had been born
Of shadow-haunted mountain tarns, and rocks
Which glacier drifts had furrowed, and of peaks
Which point from age to age their cones to heaven,
And topple down from age to age to earth.

And hearing of the song, I saw a shade
That glided towards us on the rolling mist;
A vast and regal shade as of a queen
Sceptered and crowned,—and thought that clarion hymn
Whose joyance all too keen, broke like a wail,
Became this gliding phantom of our hills.

But lo! the rocky wall broke off and ceased,
And swinging round the path, firm on the blue,
Vague, shifting dream-land of the far-off fields,
There met us face to face, no mountain queen
Of mould majestic, but a lithe, spare sprite,
Our maiden Mona, singing as she came,
And looking up above our heads, with eyes
Whose gaze appeared as though it came from far,
And pierced yet farther through the widening blue.

The crown upon her head was of the white
And purple mountain heather, and her wand
An ashen branch, with berries at its point;
Her blood-hound, Myneth, joyful at the touch
Of Mona's hand, pressed closely to her side,
Betwixt the yawning gulf and those light feet
Whose heedless steps he guarded; at our view,
A starling from her shoulder taking flight
Brought down the maiden's eyes to where we stood.

She ceased her song; that too had dropped to earth
Swifter than swiftest downfall of the lark;
Pressed back her hair, and with a furtive hand
Stole from her head its blossomy crown, and seemed
With drooping eyes, bent brow, and lowered wand,
To lay it with her song at Eurien's feet.
Her cheek which when we met her, had been—no,
Not pale, but shining white as was the mist,—
Was glowing when she lifted up the veil,
Dropped on the first shy gladness of her eyes,
And fixed them—twin blue stars with sombre rays—
On Eurien's, which had gathered in one glance
Her lowered wand and flowery crown, now buried
Deep in the drapings of her skirt, and marked
The hound which owning him as lord, returned
To crouch and fawn at Mona's unshod feet.

Was it some glamour of the misty morn,
Or was the maid, who at unwelcome tasks
Harried and chidden at the ingle side,
Seemed faint and dull of hue, a goddess here,—
Worshipped and known to be the soul, the voice,
Of that deep-breathing Nature which she loved?

Mine ancient eyes in sooth proclaimed her such;
But Eurien viewed her in his lusty prime,
And saw but little Mona, broken loose,
Made fresh and sweet with morning air and dew,
And rosy haply with becoming shame,
At morning hours so heedlessly enjoyed.

And still his eyes that met her mute appeal,—
Bold eyes that were not daunted by the sun
That smote upon his brow and golden curls,—
Grew liquid in the ripple of a smile.
He said: "Our mother Modwyth wakes and works
Already, and if she had hands as many
As bristle round the idols of the Ind,
She'd find some service for each hand this day.'

Then Mona answered rather with her fleet
And forward motion, than her eager words:
"I go to help her, Eurien; God speed
To thee and me!' So vanished down the slope.

We paused upon the shoulder which uplifts
The crown of Moel-Wythfa, and drew in
The unobstructed air with open lips,
And through our eyes the magic draught of beauty.
The breeze had swept the way which we had come
Clean of the mist, and down beneath our feet
The morning faces of the lakes were trembling
As new chain-mail that glisters in the sun,
And proudly overlooking Llyn-y-Gader,
Uprose our ancient towers of Garth-y-Gwin;
And, set there as a door betwixt the mountains
That opened on the far-off, shining sea,
The halls of Carreg-Havod crowned a bryn
Where cloven rocks that pierced the fine green sward,
Rose bristling like a dragon's deadly spines.

My eyes were lingering over vales and summits,
My thoughts were wandering wildly through the world,
And then they set to Eurien; when I turned,
His gaze was fixed, and in his eyes there came
A light—not such as when the sun breaks through
To kiss a shadowed pool, but such as brightens
Its surface when it curdles in the breeze.

I followed Eurien's glances to their mark,
And winding slowly down the treacherous sides
Of Carreg-Havod, like some insect train,—
The blight upon the green sheath of a bud—
Beheld a Company,—a mounted dame,
Set in the midst of her attendant thralls,
Her face towards Garth; and with the dame, a boy,
Who, tricksy as an elf, pushed in and out
Amongst the mountain ponies, cautious brutes,
That felt their way adown the rugged steep.

We took no note, but turned upon our course
Over the mountain's shoulder, with its crown—
White Moel-Wythfa—at our backs, still rising,
Rising and shutting out that face of life.

Grave Moel-Hebog,—wherefore lift to-day
The brow that hath so long been swathed in clouds,
Unveiled above the beech woods? Mona's gaze
Is not for thee, although she knows full well
How thou and Moel-Wythfa, like two mourners
Duly related as to some dead joy
Drop mourning weeds together; still she turns not
Nor thinks upon that nearest step to heaven
Where callow eagles whom the sun makes glad
And bold, are learning even now to mount
In dizzy spirals towards the light. In vain
The magic curtain of the mist unveils
The golden shore and silver kissing waves;
Or the grey buzzard circles round her head,
So nigh it shakes the air which fans her cheek;
She knows the cradle of its downy young
Beneath the moorland grasses, and the reeds,
Where trembling windlets that have lost their way,
Trouble the air with their complaining minor.
In vain bright eyes illume the shadowy fern,
Or glance before her feet in playful challenge;
Or laden bees rise up from gorse and heather
To tempt her to their distant arsenals;
In vain they all, her freakish playmates, strive
To win her steps aside; no life that stirs
Can reach her dazzled sense through that bright image
She bears away this day from Moel-Wythfa:
The image of her Eurien, her lord
That should be, and her ruler now, nay more,
Her sun-god since he lights for her the world.

Then Mona tossing to the boy, who blew
The horn which told of coming guests, her crown
And sceptre, with a smile which made him glad,
Entered the dark portcullis, and with feet
Whose buoyant tread had left them all unharmed
By jagged rocks upon the mountain side,
Pressed down the new-strewn rushes of the hall.
Modwyth was there, one tall still shape among
The moving many who obeyed her word;
Who clomb the walls to rid the arch or cusp
Of faded relics of the harvest feast;
Who bore away the full-topped oaken branch
To clear a place for fire upon the hearth;
Who fanned the dust, now from the fine chain mail,
Now from huge horns and antlers,—savage arms
Of savage beasts; who furbished up a helm,
A lance or shield; or thrust a helot hand
Within a knightly gauntlet, which the rust
Had bitten in too deeply; who shook out
A plume, or draped a banner's folds afresh,
And made all seemly for the coming day.

And Mona, bending for her blessing, felt
One hand of Modwyth light upon her head,
The while its fellow reached to where a star
Of arrows shone above the door, and showed
How one of them had swerved; then felt again
Two bird-like taps upon her wind-blown hair,
And heard the broken formula re-spoken;—
Which done, twice bless'd, she rose not blest at all.

But waiting with her eyes on Modwyth's glance,
Eager to speed its bidding, Mona stood
Or hovered with uncertain step or touch
About a doubtful task, which half-way done
She left at call of Modwyth;—baffled, "lifted'
From place to place, as 'twere a hound at fault.

Ere long the horn was wound upon the turret,
Steeds ground the courtyard stones, and stranger voices,
One high with eagerness, one shrill with youth,
Contended at the door, which opening wide
Let in upon them Bronwen and her boy,
To flood the hall with chatter, and arrest
Its silent service. Bronwen had a store
Of griefs and wrongs which loosely in a sheaf
Unwinnowed, she in Eurien's absence, laid
Before his mother. Of her many griefs
Most were loud-tongued, one dumb. The dumb one bore
The venomed sting which cankered Bronwen's peace.

A weary woman was the fair Bronwén:
Widowed well-nigh a year beset with fears;
A lordly castle at her back, a mark
And prize for ravin; with one little son,
Too young to do her service, and one foe—
The common foe of all the country round,
Whom—tell it not aloud, this is the grief
That stings and has no voice—whom Bronwen once
Had sought to make her friend, her freer, her champion—
The master of her fate,—and he would not.
And ravage had been busy nights agone
On Bronwen's folds, whereof she asked no question,
But set it to the unpaid debt of Cynorac,
And came with it to Garth and golden Eurien,
To stir him with her tale and with her tears,
And beauty softened in the light of his.

Then Mona under cover of this cloud,
Ventures short flights alone,—a furtive bird
Flitting from twig to twig;—retires behind
The settle, squares the cushions in the place
Where Modwyth sits; ranges her spinning wheel
Right to her hand; and ready to her feet
The stool about whose carven base is turned
The flower-de-luce; then draws the curtain round
To shield her from the keen-edged winds that blow
Through loop and lancet; when the whole is done
In Modwyth's nook beside the hearth, she turns
To Eurien's chair that heads the council board,
Unveils its broidered glories, and before it
Places the footstool with the dragon wrought
In threads of gold and grain: "Like this.' she said,
Be all base counsel ground beneath his foot!'

And near at hand while, silent as the light,
Mona had worked, two mocking eyes had marked
Her motions; one young lip had curled with scorn
Old as the dark old world, at what it held
The maiden's simple folly; and a laugh—
Born before gladness, or surviving it,—
Came chuckling from between the pale puffed cheeks
Of Poplet, as he pointed to the stools:
"See Mona, mother,—in her dreams she sets
The broidered stool for him, the carved for her!'
And Mona feeling ill at ease before
Those eyes like plums that had foregone their bloom,
Slipt from the hall, to steal within again,
Unnoted haply at a distant door,
Bearing a posy of such loitering blooms
As stay behind the summer: flaming disks
Of sunflowers, and dim daisies, scantly prized
For all the pride that lifts their heads on high,
With golden-rod, and meadow-sweet, and ranged
All fairly in a jar, which then she set
To catch the sunbeam on the window-sill.

And little Poplet, laughing all the while,
Clutching his mother's skirts, brought down her eyes
To where the maiden, sad-faced Mona, stood,
Winning the blossoms gently to her will.

But while he laughed, and pointed his small wit,
Fair Bronwen smiled, and inly ripened hers.

And Mona all unwitting now of eyes
Brightening or darkling on her, moved to seek
The dried sweet herbs, the marjoram, the rue,
The thyme and lavender, that hung on high
Hidden within a cranny of the hearth,
And threw a handful on the crackling logs
Which filled with grateful incense all the hall.
At which the imp laughed louder than before,
Mopping at her, and capering in the smoke
As he had been a witch's changeling, crying:
"She burns the herbs wherewith we savour broth!'
Then seeing Modwyth and his mother near,
With all the servile throng,—their labours done,—
Waiting a word to free them, Poplet ceased
His dance, and came with side-long twinkling glance
To Mona, when he wagged his head, and cried—
Thinking to match their wits to Mona's shame:
"I pray you tell us what were now the worth
Of a stout ploughman, with a maimed right hand.'
And Mona turned on him her eyes, whose light
And size were doubled by her gathering tears,
And answered: "As I think, there be no scales
Wherewith to weigh the merit of a man;
But there are lords would let a heavier heart
Count for the churl against a missing limb.'

Then straightway to her own there swept a wave,
A viewless, silent wave,—as from the souls
Uprisen from the trammelled flesh of those
Who waited Modwyth's nod, and Mona turning
As drawn towards it, caught upon her face
The gaze of twenty wistful eyes, and lost
The shout which Poplet sent to claim his triumph.

And then upon the floor there fell a tread
In which each ear confessed, in love or awe,
Its lord's approach; and Eurien, the golden,
His royal beauty overlayed with signs
Of regal office, showed himself, and silence
Fell over all as of a summer noon.

And pale behind him followed one who showed,
With ragged silver locks, and silver beard
Spread out upon his robe of bardic blue,
Like an old moon all worn with wandering,
Beside the dazzling effluence of the sun.

And Modwyth drank in light from him, which filled
The hollow of her heart; and Bronwen reared
Her grandly-pillared head at him, and swelled
Her stately form, as might have reared and swelled
Some proudly-crested snake which yet could bend
Its pride before him till it ate the dust.

Which while her son had followed from the hall
The servitors, and Mona by the hearth
Sunk trembling with an all-subduing joy
Which smote through life and limb keen as a pang,
I, old Glân-Alarch, watched her, crouched aloof,
Seeming to pierce the embers' fiery heart,
And, as I am Glân-Alarch, knew that none
Who looked our master in the face, beheld him
With such full breadth of knowledge, as the maid
Who saw him crowned with glory in the flame.

There fell a waiting moment, vague and still,
Whose twilight lines, the after-glow of feeling
Deepened for some of us: fair Bronwen's babble
Wafted to Eurien's sense on fragrant breath,
And Mona's eyes that burned like purple gems
Between two fires, and Mona's shell-like ear
That soothed her as I think with stored-up music,—
Breathings of Eurien's lips on tuneful days,
Garnered to stay her need in barren seasons.
The hour felt heavy-weighted,—loth to pass;
It was the boy winding his horn without
Who summoned us to meet our coming fate,
And welcome to our halls the gathering guests.

Weroc strode in; his sunken, wolfish eyes
Eager for fight; for he had hungry wrongs
A score or twain, ready to take the field
In any cause that served him for the nonce
As cover for the glutting of his ire:
And Peredur and Ruval, maiden knights,
Who clanked their armëd heels upon the floor,
Pounding the lowly rushes that denied
To good war steel its ring; and Cyndelu,
Whose mind, as supple as the reeds, still bent
Before the breath of other men: and Gryffyth,
Fast bound to Eurien by a chain of debt
Which gladly he had broken, but forbore,
Counting to forge new links with newer need.

He stood with cap in hand; while at his side
Was one whose tie to Eurien had grown
Into his flesh; who sometimes faced his frown,
But opened like a blossom to his smile:
Wytham of Borth, whom Eurien's arrow wrested
Once from the poisonous onslaught of a stag,
And who—the willing bondman of his love—
Stood frankly forth, the freest of the free.

And still without the door the iron clank
Of hoofs, and heels alighting, roused the ear;
While creamy draughts of mead and of metheglin
Bubbled and foamed within the tankards, crowned
By Modwyth's hand, and served to each new guest
By Bronwen or by Mona: queenly Bronwen,
Her face composed to sadness as beseemed
Th' occasion and her wrongs; her fair head curbed
A little from her stately throat, most like
A flower too long unwatered, that might seem
To crave the grace of all that hardy manhood
For that it dared to bloom so high. Pale Mona,
A maid of mist and moonshine, as they deemed
Who saw not in the spirit-light which pierced
The fine, too-subtilised flesh, the passionate heat
Of the white soul. As these twain thrid their way
Amongst the shaggy men with keen wild eyes,
And ears grown sharp at lonely bivouac fires,
There went with them a honey-laden breath
Which weighted with its richness all the air.

Our chieftain stood and quaffed his mead in haste,
Or turned and spoke a passing word to any
Who chanced to be his neighbour; or with instance
Pressed flagons of the wine and mead on all;
Yet every act and word of him was shaped
But to command of knightly courtesy,
When, counting heads, he found that all were come.
So then he struck upon the hearts of one
Or two among his guests, a subtle chord,—
For Eurien had lips the Muse had touched—
And moving with the men his voice had swayed,
And Wythan, who was pervious to his thought,
And him whose silver beard was ever set
Beside his golden one, we four assumed
Our stations at the board, and led the rest

Then, ere the Councilmen were fully set,
Modwyth stood forth: a woman whom the years
If they had found more fair, had left more noble.
The mettle of her race so oft had leapt
Unshrinking at the sacrificial call
Of honour, that the brow she now uplifted
Was grandly dinted, as a hero's shield.
Her voice was pitched that all might hear, her eyes
Addressed her son:

"Thy mother claimeth not,—
Albeit she brought a thanedom to her dower—
A place beside thee at the Council board,
Content to hold her right beside the hearth,
Not heedless of your wisdom as it flows.'

Some bent them to the lady as she stood,
Some turned and faced her son in churlish doubt;
But one young voice,—'twas Wythan's—rang out clear:
"God save our lady Modwyth!'

Eurien paused
A moment ere he said as overborne:

"Your place in Garth is where you choose to take it.'

Then Modwyth, faltering somewhat as she caught
The trouble of his eye, looked round the board:
"My sire and spouse were heroes, and my son—
Mine only son—could be no less; God wot
My pride would have him more, if more might be.
My widowed presence, damping not his fire,
Will haply temper what might burn to waste.'

"God save our Lady Modwyth!' cried again
The bold young voice which shamed our silent Council;
And Modwyth turned, and making sign to Bronwen
And Mona to attend her, drew her wheel,
And, throned in humble duty, set her pale,
Proud, stedfast face against the flickering blaze.
So to the high-pitched voices at the board
The wheel made dull companionment, like life
With its half-conscious motions, that confuse
The sense of tragic issues of the will.

Still keenly on her ear, where Eurien sent them,
Not heedless of his aim, his words had struck,
When he recounted how the jealous thanes
Her forbears, guarded as a sacred trust
Each appanage pertaining to the fief—

Bought by the blood of those whose bodies now
Were mingled with the soil they held in fee
For generations of their unborn seed.
And then he showed how Cynorac had reaped
The grain, scarce ripened, from outlying fields,
How felled the trees his father's hands had planted,
How come at night to vex him with unmaking
The work his thralls had toiled at through the day;
And lastly, when reprisals had been taken
By some who had the honour of their lord
More than the safety of their bones at heart,
How he had caught and sent them home, sewn up
In skins of beasts filched living from the flocks.
All this forsooth because a widow held
The lands and kine so plundered, and 'twas thought
A son would tamely take a mother's wrongs!
So would not he, by Heaven, if they, his friends,
Would help him to chastise his foe and theirs;
For Cynorac was like a fox, who spared
No roost, albeit it liked him best to prey
On the defenceless. Widows were his spoil;
Not every widow had a man-grown son;
Some had their hands o'erweighted with the care
Of helpless orphans. One he knew of these:
She sate beside his mother at the hearth
Of which she claimed the shelter. They were men,
And British men, whom long adversity
Had rendered pitiful; there was not one
But felt that he was summoned as by name,—
Father, or brother, husband, as might be,—
To right a woman who, if she should speak
Those words, could speak them only of the dead!

Then none so rude or stern of all that band,
But turned when Eurien ceased, with softened mien
To look upon the gracious woman there,
Bending to dry the cheeks that seemed to freshen
Beneath the mild o'erflowings of her eyes.

Then Weroc blundered in to mar the picture
So lightly touched by Eurien, who, with cunning
Of speech-craft, had of choice prolonged the moments
Whose beats were cyphers added to a sum.

The words of Weroc,—he whom no man loved,—
Were heavy with a hoard of well-worn wrongs,
Which, touching only Weroc, none else cared
To make his own. And so from time to time
The hatchet strokes of Weroc's speech were broken
By shafts from some keen-witted hearer, turning
His weapon on himself; while glistening eyes
Looked on well pleased, or a low laugh broke out
From lips too lightly guarded; till the fire
In Weroc's heart leapt up in evil flame,
And the grave council met to quell disorder
Seemed hurrying on its course to make it more.

And ever as the voices of the men
Grew louder, fiercer, still the wheel of Modwyth
Spun fast and faster, as unwittingly
The heart well learned in sorrow set the damper
Of outward act to dull the chord of pain.

But Mona left the carding of her wool
And listened as with every sense at once,
While Bronwen, tending with a smooth observance
On Modwyth's need, plenished anew the distaff,
And swiftly set it to her trembling hand,
Yet with a glance oblique still filched the news
Which might concern her at the council board.

In vain the voice which Eurien could tune
To any key of music, now was raised
In bland persuasion, now in sharp command;
The angry answers crossed like chopping waves,
And wild misrule appeared the only lord.
So through the tumult none had caught the note,
Though sharp as sea-bird's scream above the storm,
Which sounded from the bugle on the turret,
And knew not till the iron-guarded gate
Groaned on its hinges and let in a gust
Of Autumn wind that carried a red shower
Of withered leaves, which sadly it let fall,
That warning had been sent them from without.
There, dark against the cold and watery light
Silvering the edges of his panoply,
Driven as 'twere before that bodeful shower,
Announced as by the moaning of the wind,
A knight on horseback, pale and sad as death,
And misty as a spectre in the smoke
Wreathing his charger, rode into the hall
And struck his spear with force upon the flags,
As one who fain had propped his ebbing strength
Against the stedfast earth, and rooted there.

And then a cry which was not of the wind,
Long-drawn and freakish, but the sharp outburst
Of a pent human soul, that rushes forth
Incontinent, unwitting, at the touch
Of human brotherhood, came from the man;
And suddenly the petty gusts of passion,
Which eke had blown from every point at once,
Were quelled before that masterful, sole breath;
And hands of fellowship were laid about
His knees, and lowering eyes looked up to catch
An answer to dumb fear, while every heart
Recoiled before the yet unworded sorrow,
Which each man felt instinctively his own.

So words flung forth, and torn with now a sob,
And now a curse, but pieced and held together
With shreds of knowledge common to us all,
Made up at length the story of a wrong
More brutish, nay more devilish, than any
Of that long train by which the Sassenach
Had marred for Cymric hearts the peace of Christ.

Twelve hundred monks of Bangor, men of God,
His ministers that were, His martyrs now,—
Slain at His altar,—slain before His eyes,
Kneeling to ask for judgment of their cause
There where their butchers were as free to kneel,
But that they dared not tempt high God in face.
Twelve hundred martyrs! Men whose holy hands
When not uplift in prayer, were set to feed
The hungry, and to smoothe the brow of pain,—
Slain by the sword, who never took the sword,
Slaughtered like lambs at pasture on the hills!
The brutal Saxon, Ethelfrith, the leader
Of the vile scum which makes our wholesome borders
A foul morass, from out his swinish sleep
Awakened by the voices of these saints
Rising on morning breath with fragrant thyme
And all sweet savours of the dawning day,
Cried out:

"These monks, they fight us with their prayers,
Which we make bold to answer with our swords!'

I—Bard of Glyneth—charge thee,—God of heaven,
That in Thy sovereign prescience, not alone
Thou shalt fulfil the prayers of saints stopped short
Upon their road to Thee, but that for once
Those eyes which are too pure to look on evil,
Shall gaze unflinching,—so thou shalt not fail
To answer with Thy sword these fiends of hell!

Our ancient Bangor levelled and despoiled,
The records of our learning and our pride,—
The story of the years that are no more,—
Lapsed into sullen silence for all time!
The God-won flame of thought, inherited
And fed by us to light the world to come,
Blown out, with nought but ashes left to darken
The storm, or trodden dust for us to heap—
Heap on the mountain of our huge despair!

We stood and heard the tale, then slowly turned
All white and dumb to face each other's anguish;
And in dead silence of our rigid lips
We sounded the black depths of our revenge.

But winds were blowing, wild and contrary,
In Eurien's soul, which made his bold young glance
To flicker from mine own, grown dull with time,
But all as steadfast as the evening sun,
The red bleared orb which looks from out the mist.

Our chieftain's face was like a dubious morning,
When lion-like he shook his tawny locks,
And stroking with a hand which trembled still
The waves from out his beard, he seemed to fight
As if against the storm which had o'ertaken
The purpose of our souls, and struggle back
To find it in the wreck, and once more draw us
With that abiding power which he owned
Within th' unswerving current of his life.

He spoke, while all around—e'en to the logs,
Which broke into a sudden flame, and ceased—
Was still, as if the hollow hall had grown,
The empty waiting chamber of an ear.

He reached his hand—his wrath still struggling in it,
And took from off the board whereon it lay
Guarding some runic scrolls, a thing which but
The use it owned made other than a toy;—
A fancy wrought in silver,—a white hand

Mocking the one which held it, while in turn
It pressed within its dainty clasp, a ball
Which was not of its metal, but of lead.

"I take within mine own,' quoth he, "this hand,
And place it, deadly weighted as ye see it,
Beneath my vesture, pressing on my heart;
So by the God who watches over men,—
Though fiends have done what might bespeak them blind,
I swear to nurse my vengeance till the hour
Is ripe to hurl it on the Sassenach;
Meanwhile it will go hard but I shall add
Some scruple to its measure day by day.'

A groan almost, what might have been a cheer
In happier moment, broke from us; then Eurien:

"Good friends we have a rede to rede, albeit
It comes—God save the mark!—from vain Brocmail,
Who never, as I think, could furnish wisdom
To any, an 'twere not the backward way.
He, fool and victim of his jealous heart,
Athirst to crown himself with unshared honour,
Has dared to face this devil, Ethelfrith,
Unbacked, and with his sorry men of Powis
To brave the high spring tide of Saxon wrath
Bursting at last upon the rampart hills
Whose base it long has howled about in vain.

"Learn we from his defeat to bide our time!
And when each canker of the heart is purged,
Then fare we forth to quell the rampant foe,—
A healthy body, working to one end,
And knit together in each breathing part
With the strong purpose of a due revenge.
But from this end, which, witness heaven, shall ever
Be counted as the harvest of all hope,
We—never turning—still will swerve awhile
Like crafty fowlers; so good friends at dawn,
To-morrow, we will still fare forth, and try
The temper of our swords on Cynorac.'
A crash as of a fall beside the hearth,—

A spindle haply, or a wheel which rang
Against the flags whereon in blinding impulse
Unheeded, known or seen, it had been cast,
We heard, we saw no more, till at the board,
At Eurien's side, there stood a white-robed shape,
Which silently as drifts the feathery snow,
Had floated to that place,—a nymph-like form
We knew, and did not know.

It was not Mona
Who turned the eyes which had become as wells
Of awful depth—of sorrow too profound,
And rage too patient, for a mortal maid—
Full on our faces; no, not she, our merle,
But dread Cyridwen, genius of our race,
Descended there to front us with our shame.

She stood and spoke no word, though the wan lips
We deemed had overflowed with living thought,
Heaved from a heart we knew was big with it,
Moved as for speech; the heart was all too thronged,
Too full for utterance; so, dumb at the lips,
She lifted from her side her Irish harp,
When from beneath her fingers there broke forth
A wail which matched the message of her eyes.

Alas! it was our merle, our singing-bird!
For though she held us by a sovereign spell,—
A passion so supreme, it overwrought
The rudest spirit in the grossest clay
Of any there who drew the breath of man,
Even to down-faced Weroc,—it was still
Our Mona, charging all the air around
With fine electric thrills, but no immortal;
We learnt that from the beating of her heart.
White as Crag-Eyrie in the breathless night
When the late harvesters are at their work,
And the dusk dome of heaven, whence all the stars
Have fled before the magic of the moon,
Sweeps darkly down as sweeps the smooth-tressed hair
Framing the lurid forehead of a corpse:
Even so white and darkly framed she waited
With patient purpose till her tongue was loosed.

Then Weroc, shamed throughout his churlish nature
That he, for but a moment, had been awed
By the dumb presence of a brainsick girl,
Rose with an oath, and muttered taunt at those
Who struggled still to free themselves, and failed.

But ere he went she turned, and putting forth
Her slender arm,—such potence of command
Had grown in her—she stopped him on his way;
And now the flood-gates of swift speech broke down,
And words welled forth that sounded strangely first,
As shot in sudden jets beside the mark,—
But words which as they flowed, and gathered force,
Caught from her burning heart a bardic fire.

"They have hunted you to your hills, ye men of Glyneth!
Your rivers and plains are the spoil of the Sassenach;
And they laugh like slaves in the face of him that winneth.'

She paused, like a young bird that tries its wing
For longer flight; then struck her harp and sung.

"You have fattened for them your fields, ye men of Glyneth,
Your dead have covered the soil as a fruitful flood,
And the rivers that dance in the sun and look not back,
Are fuller for tears, and richer for running blood.

"They have sent ye to herd with the bear, ye men of Glyneth,
With the wolf and the mountain fox in their rocky holds;
The bog, with the lean wild cat, for your share, men of Glyneth,
For them, your cities, your kine, and your ravished folds!

"Ye have housed with the beast in his lair, ye Cambrian braves,
Or have hunted him down on the hills in his own wild track;
Inherit his mountains bare and his empty caves;
But his brotherless spirit—let that to the earth go back!

"If the rush and the lily now flower on tarn and burn
Where he slaked his thirst, and the fight ye have all but won,
It is that his savage heart had not depth to learn
To look for the brother who lives in each mother's son.'

Once more the burthen failed; once more the hand
Took up the strain, and shook from out the harp
Sounds that compelled our spirits more than words.
She struck another key, and then again
Broke forth in language proper to the earth:

"Dull is the Sassenach, be it as lover or foe,
And ye, my brothers, are quick unto love and ire;
Would ye come to the Sassenach's aid because he is slow?
Would ye lend to his sullen wrath your own wild fire?

"Ye are weary of laggard love, and of long-drawn strife,
So crown his work and have done,—ye are heroes and free!
But what of the bondman's hope in his trodden life?
And oh, for the eyes of our kindred over the sea!

"Let the hopes they have garnered be blown to the winds like chaff,
Perish, self-slain, and so fade from the longing eyes!
Die! with the sound in your ears of the Sassenach laugh,
And the requiem, tuneful for ever, of Cymric sighs;

"Turn the sword each man on his fellow, and make an end;
It is fitting that hero should perish by hero's hand;
So leave ye to Sassenach mercy the lover or friend,
And to slow heart-sickness your brothers on alien strand;

"Unheeding the lesson of war, and the legend of peace,
And the sacred torch of your lore which from age to age
Has been handed on, let the light of your spirit cease,
As the saint and the soldier have perished, so perish the sage!

"Forget your olden glory, ye men of Glyneth,
Cast the torch from the armed right hand ere it flickers or fails,
Stamp it out and end the story, O men of Glyneth,
Let Cambria fall like a stronghold that treason assails,
And in tears of your shame shall your land be rechristened wild Wales!'

Wales, Wales, wild Wales! she ended with that cry,
A cry to haunt the memory, and to bring
Tears to the eyes in lieu of sleep at night.
Wales, Wales, wild Wales! Her hearers knew full well
The land she sung of was the bleeding heart
Of Britain, Britain mangled by the foe,
Torn limb from limb, the parts still quick with life,
Throbbing in all sad corners of the earth.

And ending thus she swept from out the hall,
Proud and uplifted as a wave that rears
Its foam-capped crest, and glides before the storm;
But glides before the storm to break at last,
To sink, and to subside in helpless ruin.
As yet she was unbroken, and sped on
With head erect, enlarging as she went,
Till sudden at the door she turned, thrown back
Even as a breaker wrecked upon a bar,
And reaching forth her arms, her eyes abashed—
Their fire all quenched in tears whose light was love—
She lifted trembling hands towards our chief,
And all her woman's soul flowed out before him,
Craving his grace that it could soar so high.

Our chieftain rose, and, breathing a deep breath,
Like a strong swimmer who has stemmed the tide,
Struck himself free from her subsiding passion,
And gave her back her gaze with one that set
The brand of some displeasure on her brow;
As he in taking back a wandering slave
Had marked her that she might not stray again.
Then yielding to the urgence of her eyes,
He signed her pardon with his hand, and said:
"Beseech you, friends, give quittance for her youth
And scanty knowledge of the ways of men,
Which, with her early baptism of blood,
Hath wrought her fervid soul to such high pitch
As borders on distemper, that at whiles
She oversteps those bounds which God has set,
And men approve becoming in a maid.'

Then Mona, all the forces that had moved her
Lapsed into utter weakness, wavered still
A moment, holding Eurien with her eyes,
Then turning, fled from his averted face,
And heard the clamped and iron-grated door
Swing on its hinges with a groan that stirred
Her heart with pity of herself; and tears
Came thick, as falling prone upon the ground,
Now abject as a wave that licks the shore,
She thought upon the bar which shut her off
From all that love had made her paradise,
And lying on the stony earth she wept:
"What if his smile should sun me never more?'

She lay awhile and made her moan, then started,
Feeling the grip of little hands, ungentle,
Hot on the fingers which embayed her tears,
And shut from her the darkened world without.

Then Poplet, holding in his rude boy's grasp
The conquered guardians of her eyes, cried mocking:
"Merle as you are, before I let you fly
You shall confess what folly they have chidden.'

But Mona struggled from his hold, and fled
As she in truth had been that wingëd thing,
And on a path unknown to Poplet, placed
A woody screen betwixt them, and ascended
The mountain high, and higher.

As she went,
Her pulses stirred by valorous defiance
Of frowning dangers of the mountain brow,—
Her heart grew lighter; when she looked below,
Poplet was grown a midge, no more, then vanished
Wholly from sight awhile, to reappear
Upon the turret, snatching from the boy
The horn, whereon he blew a lying signal.
The maiden laughed and said within herself:
"Praised be the shelter of thy crown, Crag Eyrie!
Thy breath is keen and difficult, but sweet,—
And sweeter that it is not loved of flies!'
Then making straight the course that had been devious,
She clomb to where the sun in his decline
Shone on the rising sea, whose surface crisped
With waves innumerous was as a mirror
Shattered, as if to multiply his beams.
So mounting still she gained the frowning Clogwyn,
And saw the world outspread, with, near at hand,
The cliffs and coombs, far off the rolling surge
Of mountains, fixed as fossil waves, all glowing
In pomp of purple, or of burning gold,
Or melting into vapour on a sky
Swept by the besom of the autumn wind.
And all about her steps the cloven rocks,
And far beneath the lakes, the shining sea;
While as she went the mountains seemed to sway,
To heave and fall as with a solemn rhythm,
And change their places in her upward course.

And Mona, rocked as by the moving world
Of mountains, and the scud of sea and cloud,
Felt as she rose and rose above the vale,
The air weigh lightlier on her brow, the rock,
Springy as air beneath her wingëd feet;
So the strong heart of Nature entered in
The maiden's breast, and set her life in order.

She paused upon the Clogwyn, where the breeze
Lifted the hair from off her brows, dark wings
As of a bird impetuous in its flight;
And then she said,—not wholly to herself,
Nor yet aloud, but as we speak to one
Standing too near our heart to need set forms,—
"O hills and sea, and shore! familiar features,
Nature, of that dear face which is the all
I know of thee; which would be still thy face,
Thy very face—no meaner part of thee—
Though I should learn to know thee glorious
'Neath torrid skies, or bound in glittering ice.
Some sun-kiss'd lands are fairer it may be;
I know with them the seasons hold a course
More equal, as the actions of the body
Are timelier than the motions of the lips.
Thou art not calm and image-like as they,
Thou ownest not their rule of smiles and tears,—
Broken, where most it binds, with fierce convulsions;
But thou, loved face, art fickle as the wind,
And frownest as thou smilest, changefully,
Weeping, and laughing through thy tears by fits,
With turns of passion, or of sullen woe,
When, with a veil thou blottest out thy beauty
E'en from the eyes whose sight it blesses most.
So art thou richer, fuller in response,
To mortals blown upon by change, like thee.
O tender face and shy, I love thee more
That thou, as I, art sad at whiles, and seekest
To hide thy sorrow; both of us would sing,
Would sing and wake an echo from the stars
If for us both the sun were ever free!'

And then a-weary with her rapid course,
And heavy that her sun was in eclipse,
She sunk upon the ground, and laid her head
As she might lay it on a mother's breast,
Soft on a bank all springy and a-bloom
With ling, and sweet with fragrance of the peat;
And there not listening, looking, hardly living
But as a part of Universal Being,
She felt the sun that glinted on the sea,
The distant waves that dallied with the shore,
The vapoury drift, like cobwebs on the blue,
The silent shadows wandering o'er the hills,
And tenderer, homelier than the sighs tumultuous
Of winds which won through rifts of autumn leafage,
She heard the wandering breeze that swept her brow
Ring tuneful through the bells of mountain heather,
And thought the only mother she had known,—
Wild Nature—as she nestled to her heart,
Sung her to rest with that soft lullaby.

But sounds more earthly came to vex her peace;
And Mona from her balmy pillow rose
To look and listen like a startled hind;
And heard the panting of a labouring heart
At battle with the mountain's rugged side,
Then saw the sleek, preened head of Bronwen, rising
Slowly above the rock, and the two eyes
That caught a stonier glitter meeting hers,
Closing upon her while the face recoiled,—
Shrunk back,—as might have shrunk the small barbed head
Of some fair-painted beast before it struck.

And Mona, gazing, trembled as a bird
That fronts the foe foredoomed of all its kind,
But trembling, still advanced a helpful hand
To steady Bronwen's unaccustomed steps,
As one who does the honours of her home.

The woman past her by, and set her back
Firm to the rock; Mona gave way, and left
The breadth of all the level space betwixt them;
Then kneeling, rested on the giddy verge,
But wound her arm about a sapling ash
Deep-rooted in a fissure of the rock;
And thus she faced her foe, and gave her back
A gaze more firm, more potent than her own,
Flashed from a heart that owned more living fire,
And steadied by a soul that would not swerve
For danger, though her strength were overmatched.

The maiden was a merle but in her song,
And in the prescience of her tuneful spirit;
Woman to woman was the duel now.

So Mona waited watchfully, while Bronwen,
Who first had sought her as we chase a child,
Felt driven by the question of her eyes
To answer straightly wherefore she was come
To trespass on the peace of her retreat.

She spoke; a little fading of the rose
Whose wont it was to keep unaltered state
On Bronwen's cheek; some catching of the breath
Spent by the way, betrayed that now she owned
The need of each reserve of craft and cunning.

"I've tracked you, panting, up this irksome path,
Fit but for bare-boned beasts who hunt for life;
I am too much your friend to let you wander
In desperation, knowing of no shelter
Where one outcast from Garth would be let in.'

And Mona answered her:

"Outcast from Garth?'
But as an echo answering from the hills
Which seems to mock the sound that gave it birth.

Then Bronwen:

"Yea, I said outcast from Garth;
Not wholly of their will who are its lords;
For that same pity which of old time opened
The arms of Modwyth, leaving cold her heart,
Would open to you still, and take you back.
But by my heart I gauge the height of yours;
The blood of Connaught kings would surely scorn

Not less than mine, the burthen of a debt
Your nature hath denied you to repay.'

Here Bronwen paused; she saw how Mona's eyes
Were set a-far, as if her gaze could pierce
The mountains' heart, and thought

"She reads her fate
By the new light wherein my wit hath set it.'

But Mona caught no light from Bronwen's words;
She only bent more near, and said, with voice
That fluttered and was tender with appeal:

"What of the council,—they will hold their lives,
And blood of their brave hearts, in fee for Britain?'

Then Bronwen eyed her doubtfully, scarce knowing
If she were matched with an adept, who sought
To flout the world of reasonable folk,
With shadows men agreed to christen "holy,'
Or if—more like—this maiden were a thing
So strange and unrelated to her kind,
That craft itself was baffled by her folly.

And Mona said again: "Tell me of Eurien;
He shamed each man that looked but to his own,—
He swayed all hearts to work the work of God?'
Then Bronwen scornfully: "He is a man
Himself, our Eurien, ay, a very man;
For all his golden curls and heaven-blue eyes,
He is no carved and painted cherub, made
To smile and stare while robbers sack his shrine.
At peep of day to-morrow, he, and all
Who find their best account in Eurien's favour,
Armed, mounted, and in secret, will fare forth
And settle odds with Cynorac.'

Mona said
No word, but on her face there fell a veil
Like that the face of nature which she loved
Spread when she travailed in mysterious woe;
And soothingly, as one might still a babe,
Who reading anguish in its mother's eyes,
Gives noisy voice to what she inly feels,
She laid her slim white hand athwart the harp
About to wail an answer to the wind.

Then Bronwen's voice, grown bold through Mona's silence:
"Modwyth is wrath at you, as Eurien is;
She holds you to have shamed her matron teaching,
Lifting your voice unmaidenly, in defiance
Of men as full of wisdom as of honour,
Some, reverend with years. And worse, yet worse,—
A rank offence that time alone may mend—
Eurien is shamed of you, his place and office
Usurped, the mandate of his mouth reversed,
His motives set at naught, held up and shaken
Before his face in scorn, while he and all
The chivalry of Wales are hailed as beasts
Because like men they battle for their own.
This flame of wrath will not be quenched to-day,
Our hope must be to stay its further havoc;
I am your friend, and they who know me such,
Now wish me speed in this: that I may win you
To bide with me at Havod till this fire
Burn itself out. You will not be beholden
To me as eke to them; my life is lonely,—
A widowed woman'—

Mona suddenly:
"I have not shamed him! None may Eurien shame
But Eurien's self. It was not he who spoke
Of his great heart those straightened words,—not he
Of his free self,—some warlock had conjured,
Subdued him with a spell, and used his tongue.
I thought that I was dumb; I know at first
Speech fluttered at my heart, but lost the way
From out my lips, that then'—

She struck a chord,
The same wild call which Weroc had obeyed.
"I knew not that I spoke, a bird's shrill note
Had all sufficed to wake him from such bonds.
Yet wherefore did he look on me in wrath?
Hah! was I held like him,—he forced to speak
The words that did him wrong, I, like to one
In evil dream, unable to give forth
The cry which cleft my heart, that so I left him
Unsuccoured in the grasp of some fell fiend?
But yet I tell you, Eurien will not go
To crush a gnat that stings him while the heart
Of Britain lets forth life; his love is fervid,
His soul is high, and made to serve high ends;
Not such as he are mastered by a weird,
Albeit they may'—

Then Bronwen with a voice
That clanged against and quelled her silvery speech:
"Maiden, well said, our chieftain's love is fire;
Therein hath lain the secret of the spell
Which makes him put aside for once, the call
Of bleeding Britain, while a living love
Hath wrongs his strong man's heart would first redress.'

Then there was silence on the lonely Clogwyn,
While eyes relentless as the grip of death
Fastened on Mona; but her face was dark,
The sun behind her finding out red gleams
Of colour in her hair,—a saintly nimbus
Brightening towards martyrdom; her head was drooped
Low on her bosom; all that Bronwen noted
Was how the ashen stock that was encircled
By Mona's arm, trembled against the sky.
Then Mona faintly:

"Eurien owns no love
Would pit her wrongs against the wrongs of Britain;
Modwyth is noble, and —'

"And is his mother!
And Mona half his sister, half a merle!
One is a household thing a man is born to,
And takes unnoted as he takes his breath;
The other is a creature of the air,
Brought up beside his hearth,—and still untamed.
'Tis not for loves like these a man will cast
His country to the winds, his soul away!
But you, poor child, what mean such words to you,
Who never knew the warmth of mother's arms,
Far less that answering glow which kindles us
Who stand within that fiery sphere, whose centre
Is a man's heart a-blaze with love!'

Then Mona:
"He loves me, he is pitiful; not so,
But custom is no bar to tender hearts;
He loves me! I was little when I came,
No higher than my heart is now; and weak,
And sickly, and I had not learnt to sing!
How had I grown if I had felt no warmth?
How had I gotten strength and learnt to sing
If light had never shone on me? They lie
Who say he loves me not; his love is deep,
Patient, and calm, as deathless things alone
May dare to be!'—

Said Bronwen: "Very patient
Is Eurien's love, if love he own for you!
Patient, and heavenly calm.
"'Tis now three years
Since you exchanged your troth; you marvel not
That he should sit beside you at the ingle,—
A saint who having nought to do but pray,
Forgets to tell his beads. To you it seems
Not strange that he should let the seasons grow,
From hot to cold, and speak no word of marriage.
Truly, a love seraphic! I were happy—
Ay, to the topmost bent of happiness—
If Eurien's calm and patient love, that looks
For full fruition in some far-off sphere,
Were yours, the while I lay within his arms,
And felt against mine own his beating heart!'

Then suddenly aloud on Clogwyn Cromlech,
A mingled cry, the shriek of tortured pines,
And Mona's wind-swept harp, and it might be
Some passionate escape of Mona's breath,
Rising together in a wail of woe
That dashed itself against the stony hills,
Which muttered to each other of her pain.

But Bronwen's stonier heart made no response;
Though the swift-passing shadow of great wings
Darkened her brow a moment, as the eagle
Swooped towards its nest in terror for its young.

And Mona, risen to her feet, spoke out,
And, like a baited thing that makes appeal
From some harsh judge, she wandered with her eyes
About the crowded hills in search of pity.

"He loves me! He can never prove that false,—
Not hers his heart, but mine,—my promised home;
Let her not dare to speak of trespass there!
He loves me. Whose the name which first he calls
Returning from the mountains? Whose the hand
He trusts with all behests which touch him nearest?
No arrow that I have not winged and pointed
Will Eurien arm him with; he will not draw
A bow I have not stringed; take a false fly

To lure his fish with, that I have not made.
My fingers are not quick and deft as hers,
My eye so ready, I have little cunning
In women's works and ways; how should I earn
His praise alone, but that his love creates
The skill my hands are lacking in for others?
He loves me; oh, he loves me; I am here,—
I could not be alive without his love!'

And then she sank again upon the ground,
And clasped her breast, and locked her sorrow there.

Then Bronwen: "Child, he loves you as his hound,
Stroking your head when you have served him well;
Or as his falcon that he blinds with jesses,
Then perches—blindly happy—on his wrist;
So are you hood winked; but I tell you this:
If Eurien loved you in another sort,—
Loved you as man loves woman,—if his eyes
Grew hungry as he gazed on you, his kisses
Clung to your lips,—it would be he not you
Who did this yeoman's service,—you who set him
All blind and dazed with love, to bide your bidding.
And you who hold him dear, I tell you too,—
You think you love him, but you love him not;
Else were you full content with all he did:—
His lowest act were high enough for you!'

Mona was silent, holding down her heart
Which beat as though it beat against a rock;
The world went round with her, the mountains heaved;
What need of words to justify her pangs?
She died for, but she had not so learned love.

Bronwen again:

"He loves you as a man
Of eager purpose loves the thing that rears
Itself against his will; loves you as one
May love the ghost that holds him to the promise
Of his green, careless youth, and dims the light
That might have gilt his present and his future.
O Mona!'

Bronwen's voice broke here, and took
A sudden prayerfulness; her words were sowing
Conviction in herself,—a shallow crop
As suited to the soil,—but still conviction
Which served the cause she pleaded:—

"Hear me, Mona,
Beseech you do not stand betwixt us twain,
Making life dark for both! Have you no eyes?—
No natural cunning such as teaches women
To snatch the meaning of an unlearnt lesson?
You read the runes, and shame with studious lore
Our able-handed but unlettered lords,
Yet fail to read that Eurien's soul recoils
From such vain boasts of learning as he shares not;
That Eurien loves a humble port in women,
Nor that alone, but loves a lowlier mind
In creatures lowlier born. You have grown up
A fledgling at his hearth, so loved and cherished,
So to be loved again;—but as his wife!
No, things so cross in nature are not joined,
Or joined but to be rent apart for ever.
O Mona, I could make his life a joy,
Loving him as we love who are no better
Than women, setting up nor scale nor measure
For those above us. I would make his home
A resting-place from each uneasy effort;

The very eagle cannot hold his weight
For ever in the sky; and Modwyth too
Should cease from care as feeling that a hand
More strenuous than her own was guiding all.
I love him, and I tell you he loves me;
I to his eyes own kinship as a magnet,
That draws upon its path their fiery steel;
He turns from you unmoved, to find and claim
His part in me; mark too how Modwyth's face
Looks coldlier on you day by day; she learning
To see in you the clog of Eurien's joy—
A joy, the birthright of his meanest thrall.
Have you no virgin pride that you should bind
His honour when his heart is in revolt?'

The rush of words broke over her unheard;
Mona had risen from her lowly seat,
And standing on the verge, her soul past forth
Over the golden bridge which crossed the sea.
There fell a lull; a moment of deep calm;
The winds that had been loud awhile agone
Now held their breath; what lesser grief would dare
To break the silence of a widowed love?

Sweet Christ! But there is woe so great, it rends
The bands that bind it; darkness that fulfils
So vast a sphere that it must somewhere touch
The skirts of light! The tokens of such woe,
Such darkness, now fell on the face which Mona
Turned to the sun that hasted to his end
I' the flaming pyre of clouds which waited still
To crown him with far-reaching shafts of glory.

The stillness seemed to lighten all the air;
The vacant hush to make more room for life,
But life that soared beyond the reach of thought;
The tinkle of a sheep-bell in the vale
Was all the sound that beat the march of time.

Through Mona swept a thrill of parting love
So keen, so rare, that if it was a pang
It was a pang undying, and so wore
The awful beauty of immortal things.
And a new revelation rose within her:
The Psalm of Life was opened to her ear;
She knew the mystery of the tuneful spring,
The deep, full pulsing of the summer eve,
And autumn's teeming, consummated lifê,
And winter's hope congealed within its heart.

Then suddenly she drew her life, outspread
Upon the universe, within herself;
Gathered her thoughts, and turned with searching question
On Bronwen as she stood, all over-streamed
By golden sunbeams, set against a bank
Pranked with the ruddy tips of whortle leaves.
So weighed the woman's charms, their power and worth;
The brow no thought had knit, the furtive eyes
Softened by lengthening shadows of the hour;
The clear ripe cheek, and lips the autumn sun
Was hotly kissing: eyes, and cheeks, and lips
That were not faint or fierce with famished love;
Then marked the pillared throat, and stately sweep
Of shoulder, and the plenteous bosom, heaved
With quiet breath; all smooth and fair and sheeny
In the full blossom of her earthly beauty.

As Mona gazed her own young eyes grew dull,
Her cheek and lip wan as with loveless years;
A sickness of the heart, a chill, a dimness,
A motion of the stedfast things without;—
And still through all she saw that woman blaze
In the all-conquering charms which lure men's love;
Herself a creature only born to feel
Love's shaft, and perish of its wound, not one
A man were proud to heal upon his heart.
Alas! she was not lovely, save to eyes
Of love; to such, I think no shadowed pool
Whose darkling screen the sun has broken through,
That—seized with sudden longing—he might kiss
Its face, had sent so brave an answer back!

But darkness now lay thick on Mona's soul,
For all the light that bathed the world was Bronwen's,
And Bronwen's glory seemed to blind her eyes
And sing its mocking pæans in her ears.
Only through all the anguish and the strife
And dimness of her soul, she grasped and held
One thought:

"He shall not lose his life for me,
God give me strength to die and leave them so,—

And first to fly,—but whither?'

Then her eyes
Swept the horizon's verge, and felt the world
A desert of all howling miseries,
And with her hands she warned it off from her,—
The weird, wild world, and bright calm woman there
Who mocked her with the beauty that he loved,—
She pushed it from her, and her steps recoiled—
A shriek !—It was not Mona,—she was gone,
Gone from the giddy verge, gone, gone from pain,
And giddiness of unpreparëd act,
Caught up! yea, God, I say it yet again,
Caught up from her despair, caught up by Thee,
Rapt, lifted by Thine arm, great God for whom
There is nor high nor low, above, beneath,
Darkness or death, but only light and love!

And Bronwen was alone on Clogwyn Cromlech,
Bathed in the sun's red glow from head to foot;
Clinging with hands convulsed to the wild growths
Behind her, as she stared upon the orb
That searched her with his unobstructed beam,
And on the lonely ashen-stock that stood
Upright against the sky, and looked unmoved
Upon the horror of the depths below.

And as she clung and trembled, clung and broke
Now and anon the stillness, with a cry,
Feebler, more smothered as the moments past,
She came to feel the warmth upon her heart,
And her slow-pacëd blood began to move
Once more within her veins, and shudderingly,
As one nigh drowned returns again to life,
She saw as writ on the uncovered sky
The ordered course of prosperous days to come;
And her set lips, bereft of the warm tint
Which masked their coldness, showed all pitiless
With greed, and leanings hard and obdurate
As those of savage creatures that disdain not
To nourish their low lives upon their kind.

And there alone, alone on Clogwyn Cromlech,
With nought between her and the dread abyss
Where Mona and her love lay bound in death,
Bronwen still trembled, groaning as in pain,
Yet heard a voice half-stifled, all unbidden,

Speaking from out some secret depth unknown:
"As now you are alone on Clogwyn Cromlech,
So now you are alone in Eurien's love.'

And then she crept, still holding by the tufts
Of verdure in the rocks, and dyed her hands
With blood of strangled berries as she went,—
Crept with such speed as shaking limbs and feet
Unused could master, down the mountain slope,
And saw her craven shadow quivering
Beside her on the rock, and heard aghast
The uncertain echo of her steps behind her,
But dared not turn to look, lest she should see
Some demon form, or, all being yet so new,
Some slender woman shape less welcome still.

Then I, Glân-Alarch, met her; her white brow
Dashed with the guilty colour of her hands;
Grasping the rocky ledges, and the stems
Of herbage, and descending scared and haggard,
Stumbling with haste and terror.

So we two
Bore wildly to the house at Garth a tale
Which raised it, and the country all around.

And I that am Glân-Alarch know not well
What then I heard, what gathered, as I gleaned
The field of after knowledge; or ere garnered
For use as now, how much I winnowed out
Of chaff to find the grains of truth; but know
That, being Glân-Alarch, never word could set me
On any act of Mona, but the clue
Guiding her spotless soul thereto, would come
Straight to my hand as quickened by my love.

For even as man must be, or else God's world
Were not, as now it is,—wanting the soul
Whereto it makes appeal,—so we who sing
Are as the very dew-drops of mankind,
Which mirror all, and—

Nay, I can no more!

The hall was empty, but disordered still
By the late presence of the council guests;
With reek of viands heavy in the air,
And luscious fumes of mead.

There Bronwen stood
And told her tale again, with loud-voiced grief,
Stammering, with chattering teeth, and quivering chin.
And Modwyth heard, and dropped as one struck down
By the last stroke of doom; but Eurien made
With feet that were as wings, for the lone hollow
That yawned beneath the heights.

He was a hunter,
But never quarry had he sought before,
With quailing heart as now.

He nothing found;
Searching each crevice, plunging with wild eyes
And eager hands, in every bush, and mounting
At desperate risk to ledges half way up
The rock's blank face, there was no shape to see
Living or dead; no shred of stuff, no bough
Broken or bent; no sign however small
Of any passage of a mortal thing;
Only, a long way off, a cloud of wings,
Dark wings that faded as he looked, and told
Of eyes that had been baffled as his own.

And Eurien returned, and called to horse
As many of his men as he could mount,
And set them, for their part, to scour the plain.
All through the night it was as if the stars
Had left their wonted courses, and were seeking
Our lost one on the mountains; so the torches
Gleamed through the dark, to sicken with the dawn.

Our Chieftain went not forth at peep of day
To wreak his wrath on Cynorac, but came
Faint with the fruitless search, his silken curls
All heavy with night-dew, his garments sodden,
And laid a clammy cheek on Modwyth's breast,
And clasped her, frail and slender, in his arms,
As if to stay her sorrow; but few words
Were past betwixt the two; I think each felt
And knew the other felt a weight that hung
More dead about the heart than grief alone.

So Eurien headed not the march on Cynorac
Nor that day, nor the next; but plied his search
And woke the region all about with question,
But never came an answer back to him.
Only he knew that none could fall and live
From Cromlech heights, and all he strove to gain
Was a sad wreck to hide beneath the sod.

Then as the days went past there grew about her,
And all the thought of her, the sacredness
That rises from fresh graves; and lightest fancies
That haply they had scorned awhile ago,
Were as the daisies of her bed of death;
While all that once had stirred her spirit's depths
Was lighted by a sudden shaft of glory.

So Eurien laid on Mona's unknown grave
The vengeance he had thought to take on Cynorac.

And I, Glân-Alarch, live,—live still to chant
This song of death,—live still, unlike the swan
Who sings his troubled life away, and makes
His fond farewell to pain!

Oh, if mine heart
Would bleed to death in song I would sing on;
But as my life hath been the mock of Fate,
So is my withered frame the scorn of Death;
If I must bide for ever to be howled at
By all the winds of heaven, I will howl
No answer back, but bide for ever dumb.
Glân-Alarch now hath spoken his last word.