Lies low in churchyard gravel;
While beneath the burthen frore
Of age alone I travel.

Mute, mute my song's salute,
When summer's beauties thicken;
Cuckoo, nightingale, no art
Of yours my heart can quicken!
Morfydd, not thy haunting kiss
Or voice of bliss can save me
From the spear of age whose chill
Has quenched the thrill love gave me.
My ripe grain of heart and brain
The sod sadly streweth;
Its empty chaff with mocking laugh
The wind of death pursueth!
Dig my grave! O, dig it deep
To hide my sleeping body,
So but Christ my spirit keep,
Amen! ab Gwilym's ready!





THE LABOURER

(After Iolo Goch, "Iowerlt the Red," a fourteenth-century bard and son
of the Countess of Lincoln)