The Death of Hoel.

Selected from the Gododin of Aneurin,* styled the Monarch of the Bards He flourished about the time of Taliessin, A.D. 570. See Mr. Evans's Specimens, p. 71 and 73.

HAD I but the torrent's might,

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

To rush, and sweep them from the world!

* 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 sixty-three in number, were all slain, except Aneurin and two others, in a battle with the Saxons at Cattraeth, on the eastern coast of York shire. His Gododin, an heroic poem written on that event, is perhaps the oldest and noblest production of that age." Jones's Relics, vol. i. p. 17.

1 The kingdom of Deïra included the counties of Yorkshire, Durham, Lan cashire, Westmoreland, and Cumberland.

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's vale in glittering row,

Thrice two hundred warriors go:

Every warrior's manly neck

Chains of regal honor deck,

Wreathed 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.

HAVE ye seen the tusky boar,'
Or the bull with sullen roar,
On surrounding foes advance?
So Caradoc 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;
As the thunder's fiery stroke,
Glancing on the shiver'd oak;

Did the sword of Conan mow

The crimson harvest of the foc.

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.

Epitaph

ON MRS. CLARKE.

Lo! where this silent marble weeps,
A friend, a wife, a mother sleeps:
A heart, within whose sacred cell
The peaceful virtues loved to dwell.
Affection warm, and faith sincere,

And soft humanity were there.

In agony, in death resign'd,

She felt the wound she left behind.

Her infant image here below

Sits smiling on a father's woe:

Whom what awaits, while yet he strays

Along the lonely vale of days?

A pang, to secret sorrow dear;

A sigh; an unavailing tear;

Till time shall every grief remove,

With life, with memory, and with love.