Translations into English Verse from the Poems of Davyth ap Gwilym/The Summer

by Dafydd ap Gwilym

THE SUMMER.

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The bard petitions the Summer to visit Glamorganshire with its choicest blessings. This fine poem was evidently composed after the death of his early patron, Ivor. The melancholy and affecting allusion to the lost friend of his youth, with which the poet concludes his gorgeous description of the summer landscape of South Wales, forms a transition of great beauty and pathos.

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Thou Summer! father of delight,
With thy dense spray and thickets deep;
Gemmed monarch, with thy rapt’rous light,
Rousing thy subject glens from sleep!
Proud has thy march of triumph been,
Thou prophet, prince of forest green!
Artificer of wood and tree,
Thou painter of unrivalled skill,
Who ever scattered gems like thee,
And gorgeous webs on park and hill?
’Till vale and hill with radiant dies,
Became another Paradise!
And thou hast sprinkled leaves and flow’rs,
And goodly chains of leafy bow’rs;
And bid thy youthful warblers sing
On oak and knoll the song of spring.

And blackbird’s note of ecstasy
Burst loudly from the woodbine tree,
Till all the world is thronged with gladness—
Her multitudes have done with sadness!
Oh, Summer! do I ask in vain?
Thus in thy glory wilt thou deign
My messenger to be?
Hence from the bowels of the land
Of wild, wild Gwyneth to the strand
Of fair Glamorgan—ocean’s band—
Sweet margin of the sea!
To dear Glamorgan, when we part,
Oh, bear a thousand times my heart!
My blessing give a thousand times,
And crown with joy her glowing climes!
Take on her lovely vales thy stand,
And tread and trample round the land—
The beauteous shore whose harvest lies
All sheltered from inclement skies!
Radiant with corn and vineyards sweet,
And lakes of fish and mansions neat,
With halls of stone where kindness dwells,
And where each hospitable lord
Heaps for the stranger guest his board!
And where the gen’rous wine-cup swells;
With trees that bear the luscious pear
So thickly clust’ring every where,
That the fair country of my love
Looks dense as one continuous grove!
Her lofty woods with warblers teem,
Her fields with flow’rs that love the stream,
Her vallies varied crops display,
Eight kinds of corn, and three of hay;

Bright parlour, with her trefoiled floor!
Sweet garden spread on ocean’s shore!
Glamorgan’s bounteous knights award
Bright mead and burnished gold to me;
Glamorgan boasts of many a bard,
Well skilled in harp and vocal glee:
The districts round her border spread
From her have drawn their daily bread—
Her milk, her wheat, her varied stores,
Have been the life of distant shores!
And court and hamlet food have found
From the rich soil of Britain’s southern bound.
And wilt thou then obey my power,
Thou Summer, in thy brightest hour?
To her thy glorious hues unfold
In one rich embassy of gold!
Her morns with bliss and splendour light,
And fondly kiss her mansions white;
Fling wealth and verdure o’er her bow’rs,
And for her gather all thy flow’rs!
Glance o’er her castles white with lime^[1]
With genial glimmerings sublime;
Plant on the verdant coast thy feet,
Her lofty hills, her woodlands sweet;
Oh! lavish blossoms with thy hand
O’er all the forests of the land,
And let thy gifts like floods descending
O’er every hill and glen be blending;

Let orchard, garden, vine express
Thy fulness and thy fruitfulness—
O’er all the land of beauty fling
The costly traces of thy wing!
And thus mid all thy radiant flowers,
Thy thick’ning leaves and glossy bowers,
The poet’s task shall be to glean
Roses and flowers that softly bloom,
(The jewels of the forest’s gloom!)
And trefoils wove in pavement green,
With sad humility to grace
His golden Ivor’s resting place!

To enable the reader to perceive the full force of many of the allusions contained in the foregoing beautiful poem, it is necessary to give a brief account of the peculiar features of the fine district to which it relates. Glamorganshire, in its northern districts, is occupied by wild and romantic mountains, from the foot of which to the sea extends the rich vale of Glamorgan, proverbially called the garden of Wales. In this latter division, the climate is so mild that the products of the more southern countries of Europe are found to ripen in the open air; hence there is a peculiar splendour in the opening of this poem, where the bard contrasts the bleak mountains of North Wales, amongst which he is a sojourner, with this delicious region, in favour of which he invokes all the gifts of the summer and the sun.

This county is equally remarkable for the diversified beauty of its landscapes. “Its scenery,” says a tourist, “is distinguished by unbounded variety; it is full of pictures from one end of the district to the other^[2].” The ruins of its princely castles, in which the bard was entertained, still excite the admiration of the tourist. Edifices ‘white with lime’ continue a distinguishing feature in the landscape. Even the cottages are generally of a dazzling white, and adorned with the woodbine and eglantine—images which so often occur in the productions of the bard.

The last lines of the poem, in which the poet describes himself as gathering flowers to decorate the grave of Ivor, allude to a usage still prevalent in Glamorganshire and other parts of Wales, where it is considered a mark of respect and affection to plant flowers over the remains of the dead. Without adverting to this beautiful custom, the pathetic lines with which the bard concludes would not be fully understood. It will appear from the life of the poet, that the county of Glamorgan was to him—as he represents it in this poem—a land of hospitable patrons and kind protectors, whose mansions were ever open to receive him, and by whose generosity he was released from prison in the extremity of his distress.

1. ‘Her castles white with lime.’“It has from very remote antiquity been the custom,” says Edward Williams (Iolo Morgamog), to “whitewash the houses in Glamorganshire, not only the inside but the outside also.”
2. Malkin’s South Wales.