But who with eastern hues and haughty brow,8
Stern with dark beauty sits apart from all?
Ah, couldst thou shun thy friends, Elidir!—thou
Scorning all foes, before no foe shalt fall!
On thy wrong'd grave one hand appeasing lays
The humble flower—oh, could it yield the bays!
Courts may have known than thou a readier tool,9
States may have found than thine a subtler brain,
But states shall honour many a formal fool,
And many a tawdry fawner courts may gain,
Ere King or People in their need shall see
A soul so grand as that which fled with thee!
For thou wert more than true; thou wert a Truth!10
Open as Truth, and yet as Truth profound;
Thy fault was genius—that eternal youth
Whose weeds but prove the richness of the ground—
And dull men envied thee, and false men fear'd,
And where soar'd genius, there convention sneer'd.
Ah, happy hadst thou fallen, foe to foe,11
The bright race run—the laurel o'er thy grave!
But hands perfidious strung the ambush bow,
And the friend's shaft the rankling torture gave—
The last proud wish its agony to hide,
The stricken deer to covert crept and died.
Next came the Warrior Three.[2] Of glory's charms12
(Glory, the bride of heroes) nobly vain,
Dark Mona's Owaine[3] shines with golden arms,
The Roland of the Cymrian Charlemain,
Scath'd by the storm the holy chief survives,
For Fame makes holy all its lightning rives.
Beside, with simplest garb and sober mien,13
Solid as iron, not yet wrought to steel,
In his plain manhood Cornwall's chief[4] is seen,
Who (if wild tales some glimpse of truth reveal)
Gave Northern standards to the Indian sun—
And wreaths from palms that shaded Evian won.
Lo, he whose Fame outshines the Fabulous!14
Sublime with eagle front, and that grey crown
Which Age, the arch-priest, sets on laurell'd brows;
Lo, Geraint, bending with a world's renown!
Yet those grey hairs one ribald scoffer found;—
The moon sways ocean and provokes the hound.
Next the three Chiefs of Eloquence;[5] the kings15
Whose hosts are thoughts, whose realm the human mind,
Who out of words evoke the souls of things,
And shape the lofty drama of mankind;
Wit charms the fancy, wisdom guides the sense;
To make men nobler—that is Eloquence!
As from the Mount of Gold, auriferous flows16
The Lydian wave, thy pomp of period shines,
Resplendent Drudwas—glittering as it goes
High from the mount, but labouring through the mines,
And thence the tides, enriching while they run,
Glass every fruit that ripens to the sun.
But, like the vigour of a Celtic stream,17
Eliwlod's rush of manly sense along,
Fresh with the sparkles of a healthful beam,
And quick with impulse like a poet's song.
How listening crowds that knightly voice delights—
If from those crowds are banish'd all but knights!