Varied the stars, when nights are clear,
Varied are the flowers of May,
Varied th’ attire that women wear,
Truly varied too are they.
* * * * *
To rest to-night I’ll not repair,
The one I love reclines not here:
I’ll lay me on the stone apart,
If break thou wilt, then break my heart.
* * * * *
In praise or blame no truth is found,
Whilst specious lies do so abound;
Sooner expect a tuneful crow,
Than man with double face to know.
* * * * *
My speech until this very day,
Was ne’er so like to run astray:
But now I find, when going wrong,
My teeth of use to atop my tongue.
TRIBANAU.
[The editor of the “Cambro Briton” (J. H. Parry, Esq., father of Mr. Serjeant Parry, the eminent barrister) says: “The following translations will serve to give the English reader a faint, though perhaps, but a faint idea of the Welsh Tribanau, which are most of them, like these, remarkable for their quaintness, as well as for the epigrammatic point in which they terminate.”]
No cheat is it to cheat the cheater,
No treason to betray the traitor,
Nor is it theft, I’m not deceiving,
To thieve from him who lives by thieving.