Dafydd ap Gwilym quotes

I never entertained the dreadful thought that my face was anything other than good and fair until, in an act of revelation, I picked up a mirror. (Dafydd ap Gwilym)

Triumphant hours are the Lark's Who circles skywards from his home each day: World's early riser, with bubbling golden song, Towards the firmament, guardian of April's gate.

Dafydd ap Gwilym

Yet Dafydd's humour does not obscure, any more than Chaucer's does, the underlying seriousness of his poetry. Behind his poems of requited and unrequited love, whether idyllic or idealizing, whether streaked by savage jealousy or a profound feeling of betrayal reminiscent of Troilus and Criseyde, there runs a sense of the cruel impermanence of the world.

Dafydd ap Gwilym

I have an equal right to make poems as you have to pray, I have the same right to sing for my bread as you to beg for it. Are not hymns and sequences but other kinds of odes and elegiacs? And are not the psalms of David poems to the good God?

Dafydd ap Gwilym

Winnowing leaves, you steal nests, None charge you, you're not halted By armed band, lieutenant's hand, Blue blade or flood or downpour.

Dafydd ap Gwilym

God is not so cruel as old men tell us: nor will God cut off the gentle soul of a man for loving a woman or a girl. Three things are loved by the whole world: women, fine weather, and good health, and girls are the fairest flower in Heaven next to God Himself.

Dafydd ap Gwilym

Blue, round, miserable moon, full of magic, picture that draws like a magnet, pale-coloured, charmed jewel, made by sorcerers; swiftest of dreams, cold traitor, brother to the ice, most evil and unkind of servants, let hell consume the hateful, thin, bent-lipped mirror!

Dafydd ap Gwilym

I am twisted with passion – plague on all the girls of the parish! since I suffered from trysts which went amiss, and could never win a single one of them, neither gentle hopeful maid, nor little lass, nor hag, nor wife.

Dafydd ap Gwilym

There never has been a time when I did not fall in love with one or two in a single day.

Dafydd ap Gwilym

Welcome, with your lovely greenwood choir, summery month of May for which I long! Like a potent knight, an amorous boon, the green-entangled lord of the wildwood, comrade of love and of the birds, whom lovers remember, and their friend, herald of nine score trysts, fond of exalted colloquies.

Dafydd ap Gwilym

No lover in any language, and certainly no poet, has confessed to missing the mark more often than Dafydd ap Gwilym. Uncooperative husbands, quick-triggered alarms, crones and walls, strong locks, floods and fogs and bogs and dogs are for ever interposing themselves between him and golden-haired Morfudd, black-browed Dyddgu, or Gwen the infinitely fair. But a great trier, even in church. (Dafydd ap Gwilym)

Welkin's wind, way unhindered, Big blusterer passing by, A harsh-voiced man of marvels, World-bold, without foot or wing.

Dafydd ap Gwilym

O sea-bird, beautiful upon the tides, White as the moon is when the night abides, Or snow untouched, whose dustless splendour glows Bright as a sunbeam and whose white wing throws A glove of challenge on the salt sea-flood.

Dafydd ap Gwilym

Matins, he reads the lesson, A chasuble of plumage on. His cry from a grove, his brightshout Over countrysides rings out, Hill prophet, maker of moods, Passion's bright bard of glenwoods.

Dafydd ap Gwilym

A fine handsome youth rewarded me; May is a generous, open-handed prince. He sent me true coins: Clean green leaves of May's gentle hazels. Twigs' florins don't disappoint me, May's fleur-de-lys wealth.

Dafydd ap Gwilym

It was sweet, my love, a while To live our life beneath the grove of birch, More sweet was it fondly to embrace Together hid in our woodland retreat, Together to be wandering on the ocean's shore, Together lingering by the forest's edge, Together to plant birches – task of joy – Together weave fair plumage of the trees, Together talk of love with my slim girl, Together gaze on solitary fields.

Dafydd ap Gwilym