Tell me, men of learning, what is Longing made from? What cloth was put in it, that it does not wear out with use?
Gold wears out, silver wears out, velvet wears out, silk wears out, every ample garment wears out -- yet Longing does not wear out.
Great Longing, cruel Longing is breaking my heart every day; when I sleep most sound at night Longing comes and wakes me.
Longing, Longing, back, back! do not weigh on me so heavily; move over a little to the bedside and let me sleep a while.
On the sea-shore is a smooth rock, where I talked with my love; around it grows the lily and a few sprigs of rosemary.
May the mountain which covers Merioneth be under the sea! Would that I had never seen it before my gentle heart broke.
Longing has seized on me, between my two breasts and my two brows; it weighs on my breast as if I were its nurse.
--from the Welsh; traditional folk verse; seventeenth century?, in A Celtic Miscellany, Sel. and Trans. by Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson (London: Penguin, 1971), pp. 261-62.
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