A diau, boed gau, bid gwir, E geir, heb law 'r Offeiriad, O hyd y gelfyddyd fawr. Od oes wŷr â drygfoes draw Afrywiog i'n difriaw, Cawn yn hwyr gan eu hwyrion, Na roes y ddihiroes hon.1 "Then let the kindest wanton failed to win her affections. Many jade, Who oftenest met me in the shade, On summer's morn, by love in- Let her strike first, and I'm re- These words produced the effect Dafydd ap Gwilym was deeply in love with a young and beautiful girl of the name of Dyddgu; but he was not successful in his suit. With all his wooing and poetry, he of his finest effusions are addressed to her. After this line W. M. has: Syll yn graff ar a gaffo; 8 Offeiriad, the Vicar of Tregaron. • Suddas, Judas. 1 To this ode Ieuan Brydydd Hir made no reply. Four years afterwards, he addressed some verses, Pedwar Englyn Milwr, to Goronwy, which were conveyed to him by Mr. Vaughan, of Corsygedol, These will be found in the Appendix. The concluding lines of the poem inay appear bold; but it would be doing Goronwy injustice to regard them as the utterances of egotism his correspondence, as well as of or vanity. A careful perusal of his poetry, will satisfy the most -"---"" cynical that, so far from presuming to vaunt himself on his abilities, he always spoke humbly both of them and himself. He does not, it is true, disparage the powers which God had given him. He formed a truer estimate of them than to do so. How correct that estimate was, time has proved. He felt, and he does not hesitate to declare it, that he and his brother bard had wrought what future generations would appreciate, however it might be depreciated by the men of his time. The man was superior to the littlenesses that so frequently mark and mar our human nature. Men in general look with kindliness on anything of their own, and deem it faultless : "Gwyn y gwel y fran ei chyw, Er bod ei liw yn loywddu." But those same men are intolerant of better things if wrought by others. ENGLYN A SAIN GUDD YNDDO. Pwy estyn biccyn i bwll-trybola Tra bo i'w elw ddeu-swllt ? Tra-syth fydd perchen tri-swllt, Boed sych a arbedo swllt. CHWILIO2 y bum uwch elw byd, Wedi chwilio, dychwelyd ; Chwilio am em bêrdrem bur, 1 There is a close affinity between "O sincera parens beatitatis," tentment". While we in no way "Ambition searches all its sphere That solitude 's the nurse of woe. The two poets bring their research to a somewhat similar and successful ending. The one finds knowledge of God and in the prachappiness embodied in a saving tice of the duties of religion. The other, leaving the earth and mountthe splendours of heaven's courts, ing upwards, discovers her amidst the pleasures that are at God's righthand. Parnell concludes by personifying Contentment, and making his deity thus address her wooer: 66 Go rule thy will, 2 Chwilio am em ffloywdrem fflur 4 Mae, er Naf, harddaf yw hi, Cyhydlwybr, the equator. M.S. ing four lines in this place: Lle mae'r tes a llaw Iesu, Wenllaw deg, yn lliwo du, Ar ddynion duon diwallt, Llyfn grwyn, a fag wyn a gwallt. They were excluded, however, by our bard, who probably deemed them unworthy of the rest of his poem. • Goronwy excels in descriptive verse. Two short lines suffice to give a graphic picture of the torrid zone with its hot enervating winds. The scene then changes, as in a theatre, and brings before us the desolate yet beautiful panoramas of northern latitudes, where darkness, cold, snow and frost are bounded by a wall of crystal that never melts or disappears. Having traversed sea and land, from the equator to the poles, in quest of his object, he returns wearied and dis Gwledydd ormod a rodiais appointed to ask, "Is not my task 7 Tiredd, an uncommon term, but well adapted to express the poet's idea. It implies an aggregation of lands; a continent, where boundaries and distinctive features are merged into one common idea -expanse of land. Our Welsh language is especially rich in the number and variety of the terminations of its nouns; and they have almost always a perceptible difference of meaning. 8 Gran, the ledge formed by the cheek-bone; the upper cheek-bone. Dafydd ap Gwilym so uses it :— "Tros fy ngran * * Try deigr am ŵr tra digrif.” Thomas Richards gives it as the root of amrant, and translates it 'the eyelid,' or 'covering of the eye.' In Anglesea the word was employed to denote 'the temples.' Gwr o ran signified 'a man of parts.' In another ode Goronwy uses it in that sense: "Os dy ran, wr dianhael, A wisg y genhinen wael." We suspect, despite the canons of philology, that it was in some way or other connected with the Latin cranium, 'the skull.' 9 In his search after happiness |
