From The Misty Corrie
...Your kindly slope, with bilberries and blaeberries, studded with cloudberries, that are round-headed and red; wild-garlic clusters in the corners of rock terraces, and abounding tufted crags; the dandelion and pennyroyal, and the soft white bog-cotton and sweet-grass there on every part of it, from the lowest level to where the peaks are at the topmost edge.
Fine is the clothing of Craig Mhor - there is no coarse grass for you there, but moss saxifrage of the juciest covering it on the side and on that; the level hollows at the foot of the jutting rocks, where primrose and delicate daisies grow, are leafy, grassy, sweet and hairy, bristly, shaggy - every kind of growth there is.
There is a shady fringe of green water-cresses around every spring that is in its lands, a sorrel thicket at the base of the rough rocks, and sandy gravel crushed small and white; gurgling and plunging, coldly boiling, in swirls of water from the foot of the smooth falls, the splendid streams with their blue-braided tresses come dashing and spiriting in a swerving gush...
Gloomy am I, oppressed and sad; love is not for me while winter lasts, until May comes to make the hedges green with its green veil over every lovely greenwood. There I have got a merry dwelling-place, a green pride of green leaves, a bright joy to the heart, in the glade of dark green thick-grown pathways, well-rounded and trim, a pleasant paling. Odious men do not come there and amke their dwellings, nor any but my deft gracious gentle-hearted love. Delightful is its aspect, snug when the leaves come, the green house on teh lawn under its pure mantle. It has a fine porch of soft bushes; and on the ground green field clover. There the skilled cuckoo, amorous, entrancing, sings his his pure song full of love-longing; and the young thrush in its clear mellow language sings glorious and bright, the gay poet of summer; the merry woodland nightingale plies incessantly in the green leaves its songs of love-making; and with the daybreak the lark's glad singing makes sweet verses in swift outpouring. We shall have every joy of the sweet long day if I can bring you there for a while, my Gwenno.
Welcome, with your greenwood choir, summery month of May for which I long! Like a potent knight, an amorous boon, the green-entangled lord of the wildwood, comrade of love and of the birds, whom lovers remember, and their friend, herald of nine score trysts, fond of exalted colloquies. Marry, itis a momentous thing that the faultless month of May is coming, with its heart set on conquering every green glen, all hot to assert its rank. A thick shade, clothing the highways, has draped every place with its green web; when the battle with the frost is over, and it comes like a close-leaved canopy over the meadow hedges, the paths of May will be green in the place of April, and the birds will celebrate for me their twittering service. There will come on the highest crest of the oak-trees the songs of young birds, and the cuckoo on the hights of every domain, and the warbling bird and the glad long day, and white haze after the wind covering the midst of the valley, and bright sky in the gay afternoon, and lovely trees, and grey gossamer, and many birds in the woods, and green leaves on the tree branches; and there will be memories, Morfudd, my golden girl, and a manifold awakening of love. How unlike the black wrathful month which rebukes everyone for loving; which brings dismal rain and short days, and wind to strip the trees, and sluggishness and fearful frailty, and long cloaks, and hail showers, and rousing of the tides, and cold, and tawny floods in the brooks and full roaring in the rivers, and days angered and wrathful, and sky gloomy and chill with its darkness hiding the moon. May it get, I freely vow, a double share of harm for its surliness!
March The beginning of Spring
April New Awakening
Back to Celts in the World
Back to Main Page
Get your own Free Home Page