G SUNDAY.

PRIZE POEM.

WREXHAM NATIONAL EISTEDDFOD, 1876.

Fifteen competed for the prize of 5 pounds, and a silver medal for the
best English poem, never before published, upon any distinctively Welsh
subject. Mr. Osborne Morgan, M.P., Mr. Trevor Parkins, and the Rev.
Ll. Thomas adjudicated. The latter gave the award.

Out by the hedgerows, along by the steep;
Through the meadows; away and away,
Where the daisies, like stars, through the green grass peep,
And the snowdrops and violets, waking from sleep,
Look forth at the dawning day.

Down by the brooklet--by murmuring rills,
By rivers that glide along;
Where the lark in the heavens melodiously trills,
And the air the wild blossom with perfume fills,
The shimmering leaves among.

Through the still valley; along by the pool,
Where the daffodil's bosom of gold
So shyly expands to the breezes cool
As they murmur, like children coming from school,
In whisperings over the wold.

In the dark coppice, where fairies dwell,
Where the wren and the red-breast build;
Along the green lanes, through dingle and dell,
O'er bracken and brake, and moss-covered fell,
Where the primroses pathways gild.

Hither and thither the tiny feet
Of children gaily sped,
In the cool grey dawn of the morning sweet,
Plucking wild flowers--an offering meet
To garnish the graves of the dead.

Out from the beaten pathway, quaint and white,
The village church--a crumbling pile--is seen;
It stands in solitude midst mounds of green
Like ancient dame in moss-grown cloak bedight.

The mantling ivy clings around its form--
The patient growth of many and many a year.
As though a gentle hand had placed it there
To shield the tottering morsel from the storm.

A sombre cypress rears its mournful head
Above the porch, through which, in days gone by,
Young men and maidens sped so hopefully,
That now lie slumbering with the silent dead:

The silent dead, that round the olden pile
Crumble to dust as though they ne'er had been.
Whose graven annals, writ o'er billows green,
Though voiceless, tell sad stories all the while.

And as they speak in speechless eloquence,
The waving shadows of the cypress fall
In spectral patches on the quaint old wall,
Nodding in wise and ghostly reticence

In silent sanction at the stories told
By each decrepit, wizen-