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« on: 10:15:19, 05-10-2008 » |
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Dylan Thomas to me epitomises the feeling of Wales and its culture. I think this started with me when I went to my first performance of 'Under Milkwood' at a local amateur theatre when I was in my early teens.
I have been mesmorised with it ever since.
One of my favourites also is the following....
Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on that sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
A
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Mary Chambers
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« Reply #1 on: 10:56:39, 05-10-2008 » |
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Another good Dylan Thomas poem is Fern Hill. Very, very easy to parody, but it speaks to me about youth: http://www.bigeye.com/fernhill.htmI doubt if Welsh people would call this Welsh poetry. Wrong language! |
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time_is_now
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« Reply #2 on: 13:15:40, 05-10-2008 » |
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I read A's post and was just about to respond with Fern Hill myself! I don't care if it's easily parodiable, people should stop parodying it and try learning it instead: Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs And happy as the grass was green, The night above the dingle starry, Time let me hail and climb golden in the heyday of his eyes. And as I was green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, The calves sang to my horn, The foxes on the hills barked clear and cold, ... That's as much as I can remember this morning.  Back to work! |
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The city is a process which always veers away from the form envisaged and desired, ... whose revenge upon its architects and planners undoes every dream of mastery. It is [also] one of the sites where Dasein is assigned the impossible task of putting right what can never be put right. - Rob Lapsley
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Antheil
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« Reply #3 on: 13:16:27, 05-10-2008 » |
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To begin at the beginning (as Dylan said)  Surviving Welsh language poems go back to the late sixth century AD, making them part of the oldest in Europe. Two poets who continued what seems to have been an old Celtic bardic tradition of elaborate sound patterns were Taliesin and Aneirin. This extract was written by Aneirin in 600 AD after the Battle of Catraeth where all but one warrior survived as they fought against the Angles. Men went to Catraeth, swift was their host Fresh mead was their feast and it was poison. Three hundred fighting according to plan, And after jubilation there was silence. Though they went to churches to do penance, The inescapable meeting with death came to them. There is a wonderful new translation by Uni of Wales of Dafydd ap Gwilym, of which more later. Going back to Dylan briefly does anyone know his wonderful A Child’s Christmas in Wales? |
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Reality, sa molesworth 2, is so sordid it makes me shudder
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Milly Jones
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« Reply #4 on: 13:25:41, 05-10-2008 » |
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I have always loved W. H. Davies.
The Sleepers
AS I walked down the waterside
This silent morning, wet and dark;
Before the cocks in farmyards crowed,
Before the dogs began to bark;
Before the hour of five was struck
By old Westminster's mighty clock:
As I walked down the waterside
This morning, in the cold damp air,
I saw a hundred women and men
Huddled in rags and sleeping there:
These people have no work, thought I,
And long before their time they die.
That moment, on the waterside,
A lighted car came at a bound;
I looked inside, and saw a score
Of pale and weary men that frowned;
Each man sat in a huddled heap,
Carried to work while fast asleep.
Ten cars rushed down the waterside
Like lighted coffins in the dark;
With twenty dead men in each car,
That must be brought alive by work:
These people work too hard, thought I,
And long before their time they die.
W.H. Davies
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We pass this way but once. This is not a rehearsal!
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A
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« Reply #5 on: 13:26:10, 05-10-2008 » |
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That was quite remarkable Anty, lovely.
I do know 'A child's Christmas in Wales' My mum gave it to me for Christmas a few years ago. It got lost in the move I'm afraid, along with so much else ! Ah well. It is lovely and so atmospheric.... the beginning.......
Child's Christmas in Wales
by Dylan Thomas
One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the
sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of
the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never
remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve
or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.
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« Last Edit: 13:35:13, 05-10-2008 by A »
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Antheil
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« Reply #6 on: 13:35:35, 05-10-2008 » |
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This is the beginning of A Child's Christmas (you can read it online A btw)
One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.
All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in the snow and bring out whatever I can find. In goes my hand into that wool-white bell-tongued ball of holidays resting at the rim of the carol-singing sea.
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Reality, sa molesworth 2, is so sordid it makes me shudder
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Mary Chambers
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« Reply #7 on: 14:00:30, 05-10-2008 » |
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I like the bits about Useful and Useless Presents, and the singing - carol singing, and the aunt who sang about "Bleeding Hearts and Death". I don't know where my copy is, but it can be read online.
I once had a Welsh boyfriend who wrote poetry. He was always talking about cynghannedd. He had a gorgeous voice (tenor), too, but he was actually quite a narrow-minded person, so I don't think I would have liked to spend my life with him, in spite of the poetry and the singing.
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Antheil
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« Reply #8 on: 14:48:58, 05-10-2008 » |
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In case people were wondering about Mary's boyfriend and cynghannedd, it is a Welsh style of writing built of consonantal patterning and rhyme.
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Reality, sa molesworth 2, is so sordid it makes me shudder
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Antheil
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« Reply #9 on: 17:25:58, 05-10-2008 » |
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After the Bardic poets (to whom we will return) are the Saga Poems (no, nothing to do with home insurance for the over 50s!) but Sagas (tales of the wars against invaders, mainly English of course) so we skip forward to the 9th and 10th centuries.
There is Llywarch. His is about his many sons whom he urges to show extreme heroism on the battlefield, boasting of his own former bravery and wishing them to follow him.. However, Llywarch is left alone to blame himself for their deaths a sad old man.
Mods! Warning, this poem has a slightly rude word in it but that is the translation. It is entitled An Old Man’s Lament, penned after the death of his last sons Llawr and then Gwen. whom he urged into battle and for which fact he feels grief at causing their deaths and finding himself alone, and old.
Old age is mocking me
From my hair to my teeth
And the knob women used to love
What I loved as a youth is hateful to me
A girl, a stranger, and an unbroken horse.
No indeed, they do not suit me.
Neither sleep nor merriment comes to me
Since Llawr and Gwen were slain.
I am a cantankerous carcass. I am old
Wretched the fortune given to Llywrch
From the night he was born
Long hardship and never-ending weariness.
The Heledd Cycle deals with the death of Cynddylan, king of northern Powys in the seventh century, whose lands were devastated by the English. The lone survivor in this cycle is Heledd, his sister. The poem is about her grief as she thinks of her brothers's ruined hall, and on the destruction of the land,.
The repetition is typically Welsh, you also find it in Dylan of course.
Dark is Cynddylan's hall tonight
With no fire, no bed.
I will weep awhile, then I will be silent
Dark is Cynddylan's hall tonight
With no fire, no candle.
Save for God, who will give me peace?
Dark is Cynddylan's hall tonight
With no fire, no light.
Grief for you overwhelms me.
Also, apart from sagas about battles and history, a lot of Welsh poetry was about love and nature, sometimes combining the two with loss.
At Aber Cuawg cuckoos sing
On blossoming branches:
Wretched is the man who hears them constantly!
At Aber Cuawg cuckoos sing.
It is most bitter to me
That one who heard them does no more
See the repetition again? Personally I find these poems (and they are only extracts of course) although written from, say 650-800AD just as fresh and relevant as anything written recently
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Reality, sa molesworth 2, is so sordid it makes me shudder
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A
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« Reply #10 on: 17:57:20, 05-10-2008 » |
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I am posting this for a couple of reasons. The first is that when I was Secretary of the Delius Society I was sent the score of 'On Hearing the first cuckoo' and Summer Night on the river' ( by Delius) by the nephew of Myfanwy Thomas, the youngest daughter of Edward Thomas. He says his father had also met Delius apparently but he had no evidence to prove this, it was just handed down! Anyway, I looked at Thomas' poems and like them... this one I find quite exhilerating and it conjures up such a picture of him... for some reason! Hope you like it too Anty and Mary.  Words
Out of us all
That make rhymes
Will you choose
Sometimes -
As the winds use
A crack in a wall
Or a drain,
Their joy or their pain
To whistle through -
Choose me,
You English words?
I know you:
You are light as dreams,
Tough as oak,
Precious as gold,
As poppies and corn,
Or an old cloak:
Sweet as our birds
To the ear,
As the burnet rose
In the heat
Of Midsummer:
Strange as the races
Of dead and unborn:
Strange and sweet
Equally,
And familiar,
To the eye,
As the dearest faces
That a man knows,
And as lost homes are:
But though older far
Than oldest yew, -
As our hills are, old, -
Worn new
Again and again:
Young as our streams
After rain:
And as dear
As the earth which you prove
That we love.
Make me content
With some sweetness
From Wales
Whose nightingales
Have no wings, -
From Wiltshire and Kent
And Herefordshire, -
And the villages there, -
From the names, and the things
No less.
Let me sometimes dance
With you,
Or climb
Or stand perchance
In ecstasy,
Fixed and free
In a rhyme,
As poets do.
-- Edward Thomas
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A
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« Reply #11 on: 17:59:04, 05-10-2008 » |
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I enjoyed your poem Anty, especially the second stanza that for some reason twanged a chord with me !!!
A
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Mary Chambers
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« Reply #12 on: 18:48:11, 05-10-2008 » |
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I like it, too, though I notice the words he is praising are English, not Welsh! I don't know how much he counts as Welsh, in spite of the names of his children. He also wrote one of the most famous and English of poems, Adlestrop - Yes, I remember Adlestrop - The name, because one afternoon Of heat, the express train drew up there Unwontedly. It was late June. The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat. No-one went and no-one came On the bare platform. What I saw Was Adlestrop - only the name, And willows, willow-herb, and grass And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry, No whit less still and lonely fair Than the high cloudlets in the sky. And for that minute a blackbird sang Close by, and round him, mistier, Farther and farther, all the birds Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire. That could be any country station. It's almost as good as Flanders and Swann's The Slow Train |
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A
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« Reply #13 on: 19:13:59, 05-10-2008 » |
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You seem to be right Mary, I have always presumed he was Welsh... sorry  A |
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Mary Chambers
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« Reply #14 on: 19:30:39, 05-10-2008 » |
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He was of Welsh extraction, and obviously very conscious of it, but he came from London.
Wasn't Gerard Manley Hopkins influenced by Welsh poetry?
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