Part 8 (2/2)

How is it that I was not ashamed before the Finger of the Almighty?

I did not suffer agony at the rebuke of the Most High.

The fist of Rhys Fawr is more dreadful to me than the hand of G.o.d.'

”He means, I think, that our great loss is that we separate what is one and make it two; and then, having done so, we make the less real into the more real, as if we thought the gla.s.s made to hold wine more important than the wine it holds. And this is what I had felt, for it was only twice that I had known wonders in my body, when I saw the Cup of Teilo sant and when the mountains appeared in vision, and so, as the Bard says, the door is shut. The life of bodily things is _hard_, just as the winegla.s.s is hard. We can touch it and feel it and see it always before us. The wine is drunk and forgotten; it cannot be held. I believe the air about us is just as substantial as a mountain or a cathedral, but unless we remind ourselves we think of the air as nothing. It is not _hard_. But now I was in Paradise, for body and soul were molten in one fire and went up in one flame. The mortal and the immortal vines were made one. Through the joy of the body I possessed the joy of the spirit. And it was so strange to think that all this was through a woman--through a woman I had seen dozens of times and had thought nothing of, except that she was pleasant-looking and that the colour of her hair, like copper, was very beautiful.

”I cannot understand it. I cannot feel that she is really Nelly Foran who opens the door and waits at table, for she is a miracle. How I should have wondered once if I had seen a stone by the roadside become a jewel of fire and glory! But if that were to happen, it would not be so strange as what happened to me. I cannot see now the black dress and the servant's cap and ap.r.o.n. I see the wonderful, beautiful body s.h.i.+ning through the darkness of my room, the glimmering of the white flower in the dark, the stars in the forest pool.

”'O gift of the everlasting!

O wonderful and hidden mystery!

Many secrets have been vouchsafed to me.

I have been long acquainted with the wisdom of the trees; Ash and oak and elm have communicated to me from my boyhood, The birch and the hazel and all the trees of the green wood have not been dumb.

There is a caldron rimmed with pearls of whose gifts I am not ignorant.

I will speak little of it; its treasures are known to Bards.

Many went on the search of Caer-Pedryfan, Seven alone returned with Arthur, but my spirit was present.

Seven are the apple trees in a beautiful orchard.

I have eaten of their fruit, which is not bestowed on Saxons.

I am not ignorant of a Head which is glorious and venerable.

It made perpetual entertainment for the warriors; their joys would have been immortal.

If they had not opened the door of the south, they could have feasted for ever, Listening to the song of the Fairy Birds of Rhiannon.

Let not anyone instruct me concerning the Gla.s.sy Isle, In the garments of the saints who returned from it were rich odours of Paradise.

All this I knew and yet my knowledge was ignorance, For one day, as I walked by Caer-rhiu in the princ.i.p.al forest of Gwent, I saw golden Myfanwy, as she bathed in the brook Tarogi.

Her hair flowed about her. Arthur's crown had dissolved into a s.h.i.+ning mist.

I gazed into her blue eyes as it were into twin heavens.

All the parts of her body were adornments and miracles.

O gift of the everlasting!

O wonderful and hidden mystery!

When I embraced Myfanwy a moment became immortality!'[2]

[Footnote 2: Translated from the Welsh verses quoted in the notebook.]

”And yet I daresay this 'golden Myfanwy' was what people call 'a common girl,' and perhaps she did rough, hard work, and n.o.body thought anything of her till the Bard found her bathing in the brook of Tarogi. The birds in the wood said, when they saw the nightingale: 'This is a contemptible stranger!'

”_June 24._ Since I wrote last in this book the summer has come. This morning I woke up very early, and even in this horrible place the air was pure and bright as the sun rose up and the long beams shone on the cedar outside the window. She came to me by the way they think is locked and fastened, and, just as the world is white and gold at the dawn, so was she. A blackbird began to sing beneath the window. I think it came from far, for it sang to me of morning on the mountain, and the woods all still, and a little bright brook rus.h.i.+ng down the hillside between dark green alders, and air that must be blown from heaven.

There is a bird that sings in the valley of the Soar.

Dewi and Tegfeth and Cybi preside over that region; Sweet is the valley, sweet the sound of its waters.

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