You are there also
at the foot of the precipice
of water that was too steep
for the drowned: their breath broke
and they fell. You have made an altar
out of the deck of the lost
trawler whose spars
are your cross. The sand crumbles
like bread; the wine is
the light quietly lying
in its own chalice. There is
a sacrament there more beauty
than terror whose ministrant
you are and the aisles are full
of the sea shapes coming to its celebration.
by R. S. Thomas
from Frequencies (1978)
Where are you going to, Hywel and Blodwen,
With your eyes as sad as your shoes?
We are going to learn a nimble language
By the waters of the Ouse.
We are trampling through Gloucester and through Leicester,
We hope we shall not drop,
And we talk as we go of the Merthyr streets
And a house at Dowlais Top.
We have triads and englyns from pagan Dyfed
To brace us in the fight,
And three or four hundred Methodist hymns
To sing on a starless night.
We shall grumble and laugh and trudge together
Till we reach the stark North Sea
And talk till we die of Pantycelyn
And the eighteenth century.
We shall try to forget the Sunday squabbles,
And the foreign magistrate,
And the stupid head of the preacher’s wife,
And the broken iron gate.
So here we say farewell and wish you
Less trouble and less pain,
And we trust you to breed a happier people
Ere our blood flows back again.
by Idris Davies
There was a Welsh language opera based on the same Welsh story as this poem. Blodwen is an opera in three acts composed in 1878 by Dr Joseph Parry to a Welsh libretto by Richard Davies. It was the first opera written in the Welsh language. I just mention it as I doubt many people know of it.
Rambling At The Bridge Head 