The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #167120   Message #4030909
Posted By: Jim Dixon
28-Jan-20 - 10:49 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Req: David of the White Rock
Subject: Lyr Add: THE DYING BARD (Sir Walter Scott)
Another set of lyrics to go with the same tune:

From The Cambrian Wreath: A Selection of English Poems on Welsh Subjects ... edited by Thomas Jeffrey Llewelyn Prichard (Aberystwyth: Printed for the editor, 1828), page 156:


THE DYING BARD.
Air.—Davydd y Garreg Wen.
By Sir Walter Scott.

The Welsh tradition bears, that a bard, on his death-bed, demanded his harp, and played the air to which these verses are adapted, requesting that it might be performed at his funeral.

1. Dinas Emlyn, lament; for the moment is nigh,
When mute in the woodlands thine echoes shall die;
No more by sweet Teivi, Cadwalon shall rave,
And mix his wild notes with the wild dashing wave.

2. In spring and in autumn, thy glories of shade
Unhonor’d shall flourish, unhonor’d shall fade;
For soon shall be lifeless the eye and the tongue
That view'd them with rapture, with rapture that sung.

3. Thy sons, Dinas Emlyn, may march in their pride,
And chase the proud Saxon from Prestatyn's side;
But where is the harp shall give life to their name?
And where is the bard shall give heroes their fame?

4. And oh Dinas Emlyn! thy daughters so fair,
Who heave the white bosom, and wave the dark hair;
What tuneful enthusiast shall worship their eye,
When half of their charms with Cadwalon shall die?

5. Then adieu, silver Teivi! I quit thy loved scene,
To join the dim choir of the bards who have been;
With Lewarch,* and Meilor, and Merlin the old,
And sage Taliesin, high harping to hold.

6. Then adieu, Dinas Emlyn! still green be thy shades,
Unconquer'd thy warriors, and matchless thy maids!
And thou, whose faint warblings my weakness can tell,
Farewell, my loved harp! my last treasure, farewell!


* Llywarch hên