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Home  »  library  »  Song  »  Rhys Goch ap Rhiccert

C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

Rhys Goch ap Rhiccert

The Song of the Thrush

(Welsh)

I WAS on the margin of a plain,

Under a wide-spreading tree,

Hearing the song

Of the wild birds;

Listening to the language

Of the thrush cock,

Who from the wood of the valley

Composed a verse;

From the wood of the steep

He sang exquisitely.

Speckled was his breast

Amongst the green leaves,

As upon branches

Of a thousand blossoms

On the bank of a brook,

All heard

With the dawn the song,

Like a silver bell;

Performing a sacrifice

Until the hour of forenoon;

Upon the green altar

Ministering Bardism.

From the branches of the hazel

Of green broad leaves

He sings an ode

To God the Creator:

With a carol of love

From the green glade

To all in the hollow

Of the glen who love him;

Balm of the heart

To those who love.

I had from his beak

The voice of inspiration.

A song of metres

That gratified me;

Glad was I made

By his minstrelsy.

Then respectfully

Uttered I an address

From the stream of the valley

To the bird:

I requested urgently

His undertaking a message

To the fair one

Where dwells my affection.

Gone is the bard of the leaves

From the small twigs

To the second Lunet,

The sun of the maidens!

To the streams of the plain

St. Mary prosper him,

To bring to me,

Under the green woods

The hue of the snow of one night,

Without delay.