Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray and Smollett

IX The Death of Hoel

Had I but the torrent’s might,
  With headlong rage, and wild affright,
  Upon Deïra’s2 squadrons hurl’d,
  To rush and sweep them from the world!
  Too, too secure in youthful pride,
  By them my friend, my Hoel, died,
  Great Cian’s son; of Madoc old
  He ask’d no heaps of hoarded gold;
  Alone in Nature’s wealth array’d,
  He ask’d and had the lovely maid.

To Cattraeth’s3 vale, in glittering row,
  Twice two hundred warriors go;
  Every warrior’s manly neck
  Chains of regal honour deck,
  Wreath’d in many a golden link:
  From the golden cup they drink
  Nectar that the bees produce,
  Or the grape’s ecstatic juice.
  Flush’d with mirth and hope they burn:
  But none from Cattraeth’s vale return,
  Save Aëron brave and Conan strong,
  —Bursting through the bloody throng—
  And I, the meanest of them all,
  That live to weep and sing their fall.

Notes

¹ ‘Hoel:’ from the Welsh of Aneurim, styled ‘The Monarch of the Bards.’ He flourished about the time of Taliessin, A.D. 570. This ode is extracted from the Gododin.

2 ‘Deïra:’ a kingdom including the five northernmost counties of England.

3 ‘Cattraeth:’ a great battle lost by the ancient Britons.