The Bard, by Thomas Grey, summary

Klar, Celtic Romanticism 170
Summary

THE BARD
by Thomas Grey

The Bard is a poem written in 3 parts set at the time of the 1282 Conquest of Edward the First, when he invaded the kingdom of Llewlyn ap Griffith, “the last Welsh prince.” Edward the First “Longshanks” (“Cambria’s curse”) ordered all the bards be put to death. “

Politically the Conquest brought to the bardic order a diminished status...” A. H. Dodd writes of a vanishing social order (A Short History of Wales); future bards “soft-peddled warlike and political themes.” He recounts a bard’s tale of a 15th c. bard executed under the crabbed “law of London” for pursuing a family feud. The Statute of Rhyddan didn’t help either, but I digress...

Romantic poet Thomas Gray, a contemporary of Johnson and Goldsmith, opens his poem evoking the majestic Snowden range. He sets in the midst of a tempest, his protagonist, the haggard-eyed Poet, who totters the banks of the raging river “Conway” [Conwy], where he “Struck the deep sorrows of his lyre.” Gray weaves a pageantry of kings: Hoel, Llewellyn, Cadwallo, Urien, Mordred?...who was Plinlimmon? “Ye died amidst your dying country’s cries—” 

Gray weaves a warp of ravens, eagles and revenge upon “Edward’s race. The characters of hell...” the succession of Edwards- I, II, and III; the sumptuous—nearly neoclassic—funeral scene in II, 2., must be Richard II?, a beloved (and maligned) hero, obviously well mourned. 

Gray’s tapestry reveals the Henrys- IV, V, VI; Edward IV; a reference to the War of the Roses in symbolic language, and the very, very short reign of Richard III, “The Boar.” After four Edwards, who is evoked in III, 1? 

A segue to the Once and Future King preparing us for the Tudor line? Gray is sympathetic to The Virgin Queene: “Her eye proclaims her of the Briton-Line.” We take a great leap from the 6th c., of the Great Poet Taliesin—who like Arthur, rises again—to the last bard, who speaks in a allegorical Spenserian style (the Red-Cross knight?) as he leaps to his death into the roaring tide.

The landscape is painted majestic—somewhat parallel to the paintings of Constable (too bucolic) or Turner (too industrial), or even Bierstadt who made the American landscape so famous. But David Lloyd showed us a fabulous painting of the last bard leaping to his death, so perhaps my vision is colored by art. “Hark how each giant oak, and desert cave/ Sighs to the torrent’s awful voice beneath!” 

The poem (low on plot) has a two king lists, and a plethora of warriors and damsels. And the endgame: a bard (or warrior) would rather commit suicide rather than face surrender, is an age-old Celtic motif. Thomas Gray's poem kicked of the Romantic Movement as well as becoming the impetus for the founding of the Celtic Twilight movement.

THE BARD: a Pindaric Ode —Thomas Gray 

“Ruin seize thee, ruthless King!
Confusion on thy banners wait!
Tho’ fanned by Conquest’s crimson wing,
They mock the air with idle state.
Helm, nor hauberk’s twisted mail,
Nor e’en thy virtues, Tyrant, shall avail
To save thy secret soul from nightly fears,
From Cambria’s curse, from Cambria’s tears!”
Such were the sounds that o’er the crested pride
Of the first Edward scattered wild dismay,
As down the steep of Snowdon’s shaggy side
He wound with toilsome march his long array.
Stout Glo’ster stood aghast in speechless trance:
“To arms!” cried Mortimer, and couched his quiv’ring lance

On a rock, whose haughty brow
Frowns o’er cold Conway’s foaming flood,
Robed in the sable garb of woe
With haggard eyes the Poet stood;
(Loose his beard and hoary hair
Streamed like a meteor to the troubled air)
And with a master’s hand, and prophet’s fire,
Struck the deep sorrows of his lyre.
“Hark, how each giant-oak and desert-cave
Sighs to the torrent’s awful voice beneath!
O’er thee, O King! their hundred arms they wave,
Revenge on thee in hoarser murmurs breathe;
Vocal no more, since Cambria’s fatal day,
To high-born Hoel’s harp, or soft Llewellyn’s lay.

Enough for me: with joy I see
The diff’rent doom our fates assign.
Be thine Despair and sceptred Care;
To triumph and to die are mine.”
He spoke, and headlong from the mountain’s height
Deep in the roaring tide he plunged to endless night.

                               —Thomas Gray, 1757

see also, for an interesting parallel:
Hungary celebrates legendary tale of Welsh bards' slaughter