of nature; indeed in describing
them he has no equal, and the writer has no hesitation in saying that in
many of his cowydds in which he describes various objects of nature, by
which he sends messages to Morfudd, he shows himself a far greater poet
than Ovid appears in any one of his Metamorphoses. There are many poets
who attempt to describe natural objects without being intimately
acquainted with them, but Ab Gwilym was not one of these. No one was
better acquainted with nature; he was a stroller, and there is every
probability that during the greater part of the summer he had no other
roof than the foliage, and that the voices of birds and animals were more
familiar to his ears than was the voice of man. During the summer
months, indeed, in the early part of his life, he was, if we may credit
him, generally lying perdue in the woodland or mountain recesses near the
habitation of his mistress, before or after her marriage, awaiting her
secret visits, made whenever she could escape the vigilance of her
parents, or the watchful of her husband, and during her absence he had
nothing better to do than to observe objects of nature and describe them.
His ode to the Fox, one of the most admirable of his pieces, was composed
on one of these occasions.

Want of space prevents the writer from saying as much as he could wish
about the genius of this wonderful man, the greatest of his country's
songsters, well calculated by nature to do honour to the most polished
age and the most widely-spoken language. The bards his contemporaries,
and those who succeeded him for several hundred years, were perfectly
convinced of his superiority, not only over themselves, but over all the
poets of the past; and one, and a mighty one, old Iolo the bard of
Glendower, went so far as to insinuate that after Ab Gwilym it would be
of little avail for any one to make verses--

"Aed lle mae'r eang dangneff,
Ac aed y gerdd gydag ef."

"To Heaven's high peace let him depart,
And with him go the minstrel art."

He was buried at Ystrad Flur, and a yew tree was planted over his grave,
to which Gruffydd Gryg, a brother bard, who was at one time his enemy,
but eventually became one of the most ardent of his admirers, addressed
an ode, of part of which the following is a paraphrase:--

"Thou noble tree, who shelt'rest kind
The dead man's house from winter's wind;
May lightnings never lay thee low;
Nor archer cut from