Translations into English Verse from the Poems of Davyth ap Gwilym/On a Mountain Tumulus
ON A MOUNTAIN TUMULUS.
The following poem is written in allusion to a well-known usage formerly prevalent amongst the Celtic race, by whom it was considered a mark of honour to a deceased person to add a stone to the mound that was raised over the spot in which his remains reposed. Accordingly, his friends and followers made a practice of throwing a stone on his grave whenever they passed by, thereby gradually increasing the height and dimensions of the monument of the illustrious dead. This custom gave rise to a proverbial expression ‘to add another stone to his tarn,’ implying to do a kindness to the person alluded to.
Peace to the shades of him who sleeps
Beneath yon tarn’s aërial steeps!
Far nobler is his tomb
Than all the pomp that waits the great—
The tears of well dissembled hate,
The dark procession’s gloom,
The solemn knell at midnight toll’d,
The glorious requiem sadly roll’d
From yon majestic pile,
Whose awful echoes wildly spread,
Then fade (like voices of the dead)
Beneath the moonbeam’s smile!
But though the despot’s vanish’d power
May claim the pageant of an hour—
Can tyranny command
A sepulchre like this sublime,
Mid ev’ry shock of storm and time,
Still fresh from nature’s hand!
The urn’s proud characters decay,
And truth rebukes the hireling lay—
The venal poet’s moan;
But brighter blooms this artless mound,
Where ev’ry stone that rises round
By sorrow’s hand was thrown!
For earth and heav’n with man combine
To renovate this lonely shrine—
New verdure to impart
To its wild knoll and grassy surge,
That speak upon the mountain’s verge,
The grief of many a heart!
Alas! if ev’ry grave were reft
Of all, except what love has left,
How soon would melt in air
The pond’rous tomb, the sculptured bust,
And leave the king’s, the warrior’s dust—
To these compared how bare!