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" "I have been a course, I have been an eagle. I have been a coracle in the seas: I have been compliant in the banquet. I have been a drop in a shower; I have been a sword in the grasp of the hand I have been a shield in battle. I have been a string in a harp, Disguised for nine years, in water, in foam. I have been sponge in the fire, I have been wood in the covert
Taliesin (or Taliessin; c. 534 – c. 599) is the earliest poet in any Brittonic language whose work has survived. Although he probably composed in Cumbric, since the songs most surely attributed to him are praise poems to Urien Rheged, a warrior monarch of the Old North, these poems survive in Middle Welsh in the so-called Book of Taliesin, written down around the 13th century, along with about forty more of more dubious attribution. His name means "Radiant Brow" (tal iesin in Welsh). The book was translated by Robert Williams and published in The Four Ancient Books of Wales (1858) by W. F. Skene. These translations are notoriously unreliable, but few better have since appeared, due to the obscurity and compression of the verse.
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