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R. S. Thomas

R. S. Thomas

The Old Language

England, what have you done to make the speech
My fathers used a stranger to my lips,
An offence to the ear, a shackle on the tongue
That would fit new thoughts to an abiding tune?
Answer me now. The workshop where they wrought
Stands idle, and thick dust covers their tools.
The blue metal of streams, the copper and gold
Seams in the wood are all unquarried; the leaves’
Intricate filigree falls, and who shall renew
Its brisk pattern? When spring wakens the hearts
Of the young children to sing, what song shall be theirs?

#Welsh

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Other works by R. S. Thomas...
Kneeling

Moments of great calm, Kneeling before an altar Of wood in a stone church In summer, waiting for the God To speak; the air a staircase
A Blackbird Singing

It seems wrong that out of this bi… Black, bold, a suggestion of dark Places about it, there yet should… Such rich music, as though the not… Ore were changed to a rare metal
No

And one said, This man can sing; Let’s listen to him. But the othe… Dirt on his mind, said, No, let’s Queer him. And the first, being w… Consented. So the Thing came
 1
Praise

I praise you because you are artist and scientist in one. When I am somewhat fearful of your power, your ability to work miracles
The Return

Coming home was to that: The white house in the cool grass Membraned with shadow, the bright… Of stream that was its looking—gla… And smoke growing above the roof
Threshold

I emerge from the mind’s cave into the worse darkness outside, where things pass and the Lord is in none of them. I have heard the still, small voic…
Caernarfon Castle, by Richard Wilson
Welsh History

We were a people taut for war; the… Were no harder, the thin grass Clothed them more warmly than the… Shirts our small bones. We fought, and were always in retr…
 1
The Dance

She is young. Have I the right Even to name her? Child, It is not love I offer Your quick limbs, your eyes; Only the barren homage
 2
The Other

There are nights that are so still that I can hear the small owl call… far off and a fox barking miles away. It is then that I lie in the lean hours awake listening
The Prisoner

‘Poems from prison! About what?’ ‘Life and God.’ ‘God in prison? Friend, you trifle with me. His face, perhaps,
Together

All my life I was face to face with her, at meal—times, by the fire, even in the ultimate intimacies
The Ancients of the World

The salmon lying in the depths of… Secretly as a thought in a dark mi… Is not so old as the owl of Cwm C… Who tells her sorrow nightly on th… The ousel singing in the woods of…
Perspectives

Beasts rearing from green slime— an illiterate country, unable to r… its own name. Stones moved into po… on the hills’ sides; snakes laid t… in their cold shadow. The earth su…
The Fair

The idiot goes round and around With his brother in a bumping car At the fair. The famous idiot Smile hangs over the car’s edge, Illuminating nothing. This is man…
Chapel Deacon

Who put that crease in your soul, Davies, ready this fine morning For the staid chapel, where the B… Sobers the sunlight? Who taught y… And scheme at once, your eyes turn…



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