Beth Gêlert, or the Grave of the Greyhound

Based on the ancient Welsh legend of the faithful greyhound Gelert, this poem tells the heartbreaking tale of a noble hound wrongfully condemned. Prince Llywelyn returns from the hunt to find his infant child's cradle overturned and bloodied, and in his fury, he slays Gelert the greyhound, only to discover moments later that the dog had fought off a wolf to protect the child, and that the blood covering Gelert was the wolf's, not his own. The prince's grief becomes immortalized in the grave that still bears the hound's name on the Welsh mountainside. Spencer renders this tragic moral tale with elegant simplicity, letting the pathos speak for itself without ornament. The poem endures because it captures something universal: the irreversible cruelty of hasty judgment, and the particular sorrow of loving something (or someone) only in its absence.