Translations into English Verse from the Poems of Davyth ap Gwilym/The Mist
THE MIST.
At dawn, as to my love I sped,
A treacherous fog my steps misled;
Long through its labyrinths I strayed,
Then thus reviled the child of shade:—
Hence with thy yellow misty bower!
Oh, vanish for one single hour,
Thou cassock! wove by wizard spell—
Smoke of the goblin forge of hell—
Spread like the spider’s filmy roof,
Veil of the skies, the tempest’s woof.
The pathless snow is in thy breast—
In thee secure the felons rest.
On wings obscure, with frosty wreath,
Thou spread’st the brittle boughs of heath;
And as thou float’st, the fairy tribe
Make thy long flaggy skirts their gibe!
Fleece of the rock—cowl of the heav’n,
Thou banish’d wave from ocean driv’n;
Cloud of the crooked mountain tow’r,
Canst thou not burst one single hour?
The swarth excretion of the night
Veil’d path and heath, and mountain height,
With many a dark and mantling wave,
Till heav’n was rayless as a cave.
Hung o’er the rocks a scowling tent,
It wrapp’d heav’n’s dawning battlement:
The woods, the hills, the shore, the sea,
The birchen shrubs, were lost to me.
In endless viewless swamps I fell,
In every dank and dwarfish dell;
A hundred wry-mouthed goblins cast
Mad laughter on me—as I past
An oath of hearty wrath I swore,
Yon mist should never lead me more,
The jest of fiends, through brier and brake,
E’en for my matchless Morvyth’s sake.