The Peat–pit

	Woe to the poet (though he might be blamed)

	who's lost and full of care.

	Dark is the night on a cold moor,

4	dark, oh, that I had a torch!

	It's dark over there, no good will befall me,

	it's dark (and I'm losing my senses) over here.

	Dark is the land down below (I've been duped),

8	dark is the waxing moon.

	Woe is me that the shapely girl, of such radiant nature,

	does not know how dark it is,

	and that I (all praise to her is mine)

12	am out in thickest darkness.

	There are no paths in these parts,

	I well know that even by day

	I'd be unable to make my way

16	to a homestead either here or there,

	let alone (a colder comfort,

	it is night) without light or stars.

	It's not wise for a poet from another land,

20	and it's not pleasant (for fear of treachery or deceit)

	to be found in the same land as my foe

	and caught, I and my grey–black horse.

	It was no wiser (it was even wilder yonder)

24	for us to find ourselves, as we fled,

	drowned, after noble reverence,

	in a peat-pit, my horse and I.

	Such peril on a moor that's an ocean almost,

28	who can do any more in a peat-pit?

	It's a fish–pond belonging to Gwyn ap Nudd,

	alas that we should suffer it!

	A pit between heath and ravine,

32	the place of phantoms and their brood.

	I'd not willingly drink that water,

	it's their privilege and bathing–place.

	A lake of acrid wine, a tide of reddish brown,

36	a haven where pigs washed themselves.

	I ruined entirely my kersey stockings

	from Carmarthen in a hollow bog.

	A swell (where there's no glut of gifts for a net)

40	of stagnant water, I received no honour there.

	I know not why (except to be disrespected)

	I'd enter that peat–pit with my horse.

	A curse upon the idiot who dug it

44	(he did not triumph) — that was in blazing heat.

	There's little chance I'll leave (if I reach dry land)

	my blessing in the peatbog.