Translations into English Verse from the Poems of Davyth ap Gwilym/To an Echo in Snowdon
ORIGINAL POEMS.
TO AN ECHO IN SNOWDON.
Thou bodiless, shadowless elf! careering
From fell to rock, from rock to tow’r!
With many a shout of goblin laughter cheering
The mountain spirits in their craggy bow’r;
Turning to faery revelry and mirth
Each sound of weal or woe that owes its birth
To mortal man—frail being of an hour!
Like aspen leaf that quails with like emotion,
Beneath the summer’s flick’ring breeze,
As from the hurricane whose fierce commotion
Wracks into dell and precipice the seas—
Like avalanche, whose earth-born thunders hear
Alike the bugle of the mountaineer,
And a whole army’s warlike revelries!
Thus thou each voice that near thy dwelling lingers
With elfin murmurs dost salute,
Till the whole mountain fastness to thy fingers
Trembles instinct with music like a lute!
Like wintry floods the gathering chorus broods
O’er all the waste and boundless solitudes,
Nor fell nor fount nor precipice is mute.
The monarch’s voice, the shepherd’s idle shout,
And childhood’s laugh of ecstasy,
Alike have drawn thy sweet responses out,
And filled thy thousand hills with melody!
Mirror of sound! as ocean is of heaven,
(Its depths with sun and shade and storm engraven,
And tiny star and cloudy canopy!)
The earth, the sea, the palace, and the tomb
Teem with the marks of human pride;
How holy then is the melodious gloom
Of thy sweet oracle to none denied!
Floating to heav’n along the mountain air,
Like angel hosts that ever wait to bear
Before the throne of God the humblest infant’s prayer!