A favorable specimen is Taliessin's "Invocation of the Wind" at the door of Castle Teganwy. "Discover thou what it is,-- The strong creature from before the flood, Without flesh, without bone, without head, without feet, It will neither be younger nor older than at the beginning; It has no fear, nor the rude wants of created things. Great God! how the sea whitens when it comes! It is in the field, it is in the wood, Without hand, without foot, Without age, without season, It is always of the same age with the ages of ages, And of equal breadth with the surface of the earth. It was not born, it sees not, And is not seen; it does not come when desired; It has no form, it bears no burden, For it is void of sin. It makes no perturbation in the place where God wills it, On the sea, on the land." In one of his poems he asks:-- "Is there but one course to the wind? But one to the water of the sea? Is there but one spark in the fire of boundless energy?" He says of his hero, Cunedda,-- "He will assimilate, he will agree with the deep and the shallow." To another,-- "When I lapse to a sinful word, May neither you, nor others hear." Of an enemy,-- "The caldron of the sea was bordered round by his land, but it would not boil the food of a coward." To an exile on an island he says,-- "The heavy blue chain of the sea didst thou, O just man, endure." Another bard in like tone says,-- "I am possessed of songs such as no son of man can repeat; one of them is called the 'Helper'; it will help thee at thy need in sickness, grief, and all adversities. I know a song which I need only to sing when men have loaded me with bonds: when I sing it, my chains fall in pieces and I walk forth at liberty." The Norsemen have no less faith in poetry and its power, when they describe it thus:-- "Odin spoke everything in rhyme. He and his temple-gods were called song-smiths. He could make his enemies in battle blind or deaf, and their weapons so blunt that they could no more cut than a willow-twig. Odin taught these arts in runes or songs, which are called incantations."[2] The Crusades brought out the genius of France, in the twelfth century, when Pierre d'Auvergne said,-- "I will sing a new song which resounds in my breast: never was a song good or beautiful which resembled any other." And Pons de Capdeuil declares,-- "Since the air renews itself and softens, so must my heart renew itself, and what buds in it buds and grows outside of it." There is in every poem a height which attracts more than other parts, and is best remembered. Thus, in "Morte d'Arthur," I remember nothing so well as Sir Gawain's parley with Merlin in his wonderful prison:--