Dafydd ap Gwilym: Quotes about love

“There never has been a time when I did not fall in love with one or two in a single day.”

Dafydd ap Gwilym

Ni bu amser na charwn…
Yn y dydd ai un ai dwy.
"Merched Llanbadarn" (The Girls of Llanbadarn), line 13; translation from Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson (ed. and trans.) A Celtic Miscellany (Harmondsworth: Penguin, [1951] 1975) p. 209.

Love , Time

“Yet Dafydd's humour does not obscure, any more than Chaucer's does, the underlying seriousness of his poetry. Behind his poems of requited and unrequited love, whether idyllic or idealizing, whether streaked by savage jealousy or a profound feeling of betrayal reminiscent of Troilus and Criseyde, there runs a sense of the cruel impermanence of the world.”

Dafydd ap Gwilym

Patrick Sims-Williams, in Boris Ford (ed.) Medieval Literature: The European Inheritance (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983) p. 302.
Criticism

Love , World , Jealousy , Feeling

“Welcome, with your lovely greenwood choir, summery month of May for which I long! Like a potent knight, an amorous boon, the green-entangled lord of the wildwood, comrade of love and of the birds, whom lovers remember, and their friend, herald of nine score trysts, fond of exalted colloquies.”

Dafydd ap Gwilym

Hawddamor, glwysgor glasgoed,
Fis Mai haf, canys mau hoed.
Cadarn farchog serchog sâl,
Cadwynwyrdd feistr coed anial;
Cyfaill cariad ac adar,
Cof y serchogion a'u câr;
Cennad nawugain cynnadl,
Caredig urddedig ddadl.
"Mis Mai a Mis Ionawr" (To May and January), line 1; translation from Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson (ed. and trans.) A Celtic Miscellany (Harmondsworth: Penguin, [1951] 1975) p. 75.

Love , Lovers , Bird

“God is not so cruel as old men tell us: nor will God cut off the gentle soul of a man for loving a woman or a girl. Three things are loved by the whole world: women, fine weather, and good health, and girls are the fairest flower in Heaven next to God Himself.”

Dafydd ap Gwilym

Nid ydyw Duw mor greulon
Ag y dywaid hen ddynion.
Ni chyll Duw enaid gŵr mwyn,
Er caru gwraig na morwyn.
Tripheth a gerir drwy'r byd:
Gwraig a hinon ac iechyd.
Merch sydd decaf blodeuyn
Yn y nef ond Duw ei hun.
"Y Bardd a'r Brawd Llwyd" (The Poet and the Grey Brother), line 37; translation from Dafydd ap Gwilym (trans. Nigel Heseltine) Twenty-Five Poems (Banbury: The Piers Press, 1968) p. 42.

Love , Women , Men , God

“It was sweet, my love, a while
To live our life beneath the grove of birch,
More sweet was it fondly to embrace
Together hid in our woodland retreat,
Together to be wandering on the ocean's shore,
Together lingering by the forest's edge,
Together to plant birches – task of joy –
Together weave fair plumage of the trees,
Together talk of love with my slim girl,
Together gaze on solitary fields.”

Dafydd ap Gwilym

Digrif fu, fun, un ennyd
Dwyn dan un bedwlwyn ein byd.
Cydlwynach , difyrrach fu,
Coed olochwyd, cydlechu,
Cydfyhwman marian môr,
Cydaros mewn coed oror,
Cydblannu bedw, gwaith dedwydd,
Cydblethu gweddeiddblu gwŷdd.
Cydadrodd serch â'r ferch fain,
Cydedrych caeau didrain.
"Y Serch Lledrad" (Love Kept Secret), line 23; translation from Dafydd ap Gwilym (ed. and trans. Rachel Bromwich) A Selection of Poems (Harmondsworth, Penguin, [1982] 1985) p. 34.

Love , Life , Girl , Tree