The Red Book of Hergest

When extermination becomes the highest duty
From sea to the shoreless land,
Say, lady, that the world is at an end.

Everyone must give up what he loves.

I -a dialogue between Myrddin and his sister Gwendydd


The White Town in the bosom of the wood!
There has ever been of its lustyhood,
On the surface of the grass, the blood!

Fly thee hence and hide thyself...
Prostration is useless, thy creeping will cause a noise.

XVI


This buttress, and that one there,
More congenial around them would have been
The joy of a host,
And a tread of a minstrel.

XII


This leaf, is it not driven by the wind?
Woe to it as to its fate!
It is old, this year was it born.

Let the face of the ground be turned up,
Let the assailants be covered,
When the chiefs repair the toil of war.

XI