Big with hosts of mighty name,
Squadrons three against him came;
This the force of Eirin hiding,
Side by side as proudly riding,
On her shadow long and gay
Lochlin plows the wat'ry way;
There the Norman sails afar
Catch the winds and join the war:
Black and huge along they sweep,
Burdens of the angry deep.

Dauntless on his native sands
The dragon-son of Mona stands;
In glitt'ring arms and glory drest,
High he rears his ruby crest.
There the thund'ring strokes begin,
There the press, and there the din;

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father, A.D. 1120. The date I have altered, agreeably to the text of Mr. Jones, to A.D. 1137.

V. 4. Gwyneth] North Wales.

V. 8. "With open heart and bounteous hand."

Swift. Cad. and Van.

V. 10. "A battle round of squadrons three they shew." Fairfax. Tasso, xviii. 96.

V. 13. "And on her shadow rides in floating gold." Dryden. A. Mir. G. Steevens.

V. 14. Lochlin] Denmark.

"Watery way," Dryden. Æn. iii. 330. Rogers.

V. 20. The red dragon is the device of Cadwallader, which all his descendants bore on their banners. Mason.

V. 23. "It seems (says Dr. Evans, p. 26,) that the fleet landed in some part of the frith of Menai, and that it was a kind of mixt engagement, some fighting from the shore, others from the ships; and probably the great slaughter was owing

Talymalfra's rocky shore
Echoing to the battle's roar.
Check'd by the torrent-tide of blood,
Backward Meinai rolls his flood;
While, heap'd his master's feet around,
Prostrate warriors gnaw the ground.
Where his glowing eye-balls turn,
Thousand banners round him burn:
Where he points his purple spear,
Hasty, hasty rout is there,
Marking with indignant eye
Fear to stop, and shame to fly.
There confusion, terror's child,
Conflict fierce, and ruin wild,

Agony, that pants for breath,

Despair and honourable death.

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35

40

to its being low water, and that they could not sail. This will doubtless remind many of the spirited account delivered by the noblest historian of ancient Greece, of a similar conflict on the shore of Pylus, between the Athenians and the Spartans under the gallant Brasidas. Thucyd. Bel. Pelop. lib. iv. сар. 12."

V. 25. "Tal Moelvre." Jones.

V. 27. This and the three following lines are not in the former editions, but are now added from the author's MS.

Mason.

V. 31. From this line to the conclusion, the translation is indebted to the genius of Gray, very little of it being in the original, which closes with a sentiment omitted by the translator: "And the glory of our Prince's wide-wasting sword shall be celebrated in a hundred languages, to give him his merited praise."

THE DEATH OF HOEL.

AN ODE. SELECTED FROM THE GODODIN.*

[See S. Turner's Vindication of Ancient British Poems, p. 50. Warton's Engl. Poetry, vol. i. p. lxiii.]

HAD I but the torrent's might,

With headlong rage and wild affright
Upon Deïra's squadrons hurl'd

To rush, and sweep them from the world!

* Of Aneurin, styled the Monarch of the Bards. He flourished about the time of Taliessin, A. D. 570.1 This Ode is extracted from the Gododin. See Evans. Specimens, p. 71 and 73. This poem is extremely difficult to be understood, being written, if not in the Pictish, at least in a dialect of the Britons, very different from the modern Welsh. See Evans, p. 68-75.

"Aneurin with the flowing Muse, King of Bards, brother to Gildas Albanius the historian, lived under Mynyddawg of Edinburgh, a prince of the North, whose Eurdorchogion, or warriors wearing the golden torques, three hundred and sixtythree in number, were all slain, except Aneurin and two others, in a battle with the Saxons at Cattraeth, on the eastern coast of Yorkshire. His Gododin, an heroic poem written on that event, is perhaps the oldest and noblest production of that age." Jones. Relics, vol. i. p. 17. - Taliessin composed a poem called Cunobiline's Incantation,' in emulation of excelling the Gododin of Aneurin his rival. He accomplished his aim, in the opinion of subsequent bards, by condensing the prolixity, without losing the ideas, of his opponent.

V. 3. The kingdom of Deïra included the counties of Yorkshire, Durham, Lancashire, Westmoreland, and Cumberland. See Jones. Relics, vol. i. p. 17.

1 Mr. Jones, in his Relics, vol. i. p. 17, says, that Aneurin flourished about A. D. 510.

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.

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To Cattraeth's vale in glitt'ring 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 extatic juice.
Flush'd with mirth and hope they burn:

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But none from Cattraeth's vale return,

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V. 7. Cian] In Jones. Relics, it is spelt 'Kian."

V. 11. In the rival poem of Taliessin mentioned before, this circumstance is thus expressed: "Three, and threescore, and three hundred heroes flocked to the variegated banners of Cattraeth; but of those who hastened from the flowing mead-goblet, save three, returned not. Cynon and Cattraeth with hymns they commemorate, and me for my blood they mutually lament." See Jones. Relics, vol. ii. p. 14. - "The great topic perpetually recurring in the Gododin is, that the Britons lost the battle of Cattraeth, and suffered so severely, because they had drunk their mead too profusely. The passages in the Gododin are numerous on this point." See Sharon Turner's Vindication of the Anc. British Poems, p. 51.

V. 14. See Sayer's War Song, from the Gaelic, in his Poems, p. 174.

V. 17. See Fr. Goldsmith. Transl. of Grotius. Joseph Sophompaneas. p. 9. "Nectar of the Bees," and Euripid. Bacchæ. v. 143. ῥεῖ δὲ μελισσᾶν νέκταρι.

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.

HAVE ye seen the tusky boar,*
Or the bull, with sullen roar,
On surrounding foes advance?
So Caràdoc bore his lance.

CONAN's name, † my lay, rehearse,
Build to him the lofty verse,
Sacred tribute of the bard,
Verse, the hero's sole reward.
As the flame's devouring force;
As the whirlwind in its course;

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V. 20. In the Latin translation: "Ex iis autem, qui nimio potu madidi ad bellum properabant, non evasere nisi tres." V. 21. Properly 'Conon, or, as in the Welsh, Chynon.' V. 23. In the Latin translation: "Et egomet ipse sanguine rubens, aliter ad hoc carmen compingendum non superstes fuissem." M. "Gray has given a kind of sentimental modesty to his Bard which is quite out of place." Quarterly Review.

* This and the following short fragment ought to have appeared among the Posthumous Pieces of Gray; but it was thought preferable to insert them in this place, with the preceding fragment from the Gododin. See Jones. Relics, vol. i. p. 17.

+ In Jones. Relics, vol. i. p. 17, it is Vedel's name;' and in turning to the original I see Rhudd Fedel, as well as in the Latin translation of Dr. Evans, p. 75.

V. 2. "He knew himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme." Milt. Lycidas. Luke.

G