Translations into English Verse from the Poems of Davyth ap Gwilym/To Morvyth (2)
TO MORVYTH,
WHEN SHE MARRIED HUNCHBACK.
Too long I’ve loved the fickle maid,
My love is turned to grief and pain;
In vain delusive hopes I stray’d,
Through days that ne’er will dawn again;
And she, in beauty like the dawn,
From me has now her heart withdrawn!
A constant suitor—on her ear
My sweetest melodies I pour’d;
Where’er she wander’d I was near;
For her whose face my soul ador’d
My wealth I madly spent in wine,
And gorgeous jewels of the mine.
I deck’d her arms with lovely chains,
With bracelets wove of slender gold;
I sang her charms in varied strains,
Her praise to every minstrel told:
The bards of distant Keri know
That she is spotless as the snow!
These proofs of love I hoped might bind
My Morvyth to be ever true:
Alas! to deep despair consign’d,
My bosom’s blighted hopes I rue,
And the base craft that gave her charms,
Oh, anguish! to another’s arms!
He adds that he does not know whether she was induced to desert him by fraud or by violence; but that, in either case, he is equally undone.
In another poem he again reproaches her with inconstancy and ingratitude, declaring that, like the cuckoo, he has had only one song—the name of Morvyth.