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Collected Poems: 1945-1990
A collection of R.S. Thomas's poems, published to mark his 80th birthday. Many of his themes are prophetic to issues such as technology and our use of it to destroy the natural world; and the search for personal and national identity and for meaning in human life.
560 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1993
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About the author
R.S. Thomas
92 books58 followersRonald Stuart Thomas (1913-2000) (otherwise stylised as R.S. Thomas) was a Welsh poet and Anglican priest who was noted for his nationalism, spirituality and deep dislike of the anglicisation of Wales.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 36 reviews
December 31, 2017
Is there a good way to write poetry? In the late Sixties, like many thousands of other unwashed urchins, I encountered RS Thomas at school in a slap-in-the-face poem that has puzzled me ever since.
You remember Davies? He died you know
With his face to the wall, as the manner is
Of the poor peasant in his stone croft
On the Welsh hills...
...
The bare floor without a rug
Or mat to soften the loud tread
Of neighbours crossing the uneasy boards
To peer at Davies with gruff words
Of meaningless comfort; before they turned
Heartless away from the stale smell
Of death in league with those dank walls.
(Death of a Peasant)
In his capacity as an Anglican priest for rural communities, RS Thomas displays a proprietorial attitude to his own people, the real folk of the Welsh hills, but I am not convinced that he makes the mistake of assuming he is one of them. From my reading about Lloyd George for example, I imagine the Welsh as Non-Conformists when they are even Christians, to whom the Anglican Church was an imposition, representative of the landowner rather than the peasant. He does not even especially admire them.
You failed me farmer, I was afraid you would
The day I saw you loitering with the cows,
Yourself one of them ...
... The two things
That could redeem your ignorance, the beauty
And grace that trees and flowers labour to teach,
Were never yours, you shut your heart against them.
You stopped your ears to the soft influence
Of birds, preferring ...
... the shallow stream
Of neighbours’ trivial talk.
For this I leave you
Alone in your harsh acres, herding pennies
Into a sock to serve you for a pillow
Through the long night that waits upon your span.
(Valedication)
When he speaks of an idiot in ‘The Fair’, he is brutally frank and sees this imbecile as representative of his people.
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 mankind
Being taken for a ride by a rich
Relation...
Sure enough, Rose Cottage, the one pretty little sight in a terrace of simple red brick dwellings, is not Welsh after all, but home to the invader:
...It was registered in the heart
Of a nation, and so, sure
Of its being. All summer
It generated the warmth
Of its blooms, red lamps
To guide you. And if you came
Too late in the bleak cold
Of winter, there were the faces
At the window, English faces,
With red cheeks, countering the thorns.
(Rose Cottage)
Thomas dislikes the English, or more accurately, he hates the way their sentiment and money has made fools of the Welsh. English money is alienating to his mind, English values are all wrong: . “...to make real the power of the pounds, / That in Wales would have gone rather / To patch up the family stocking, / Emblem of a nation’s despair.” (Rhodri)
One senses that he is disappointed in the Welsh, that he sees them as a defeated people, slowly vanishing from their countryside, unable to endure its privations.
...
We were a people bred on legends,
Warming our hands at the red past...
...
We were a people and we are so yet,
When we have finished quarrelling for crumbs
Under the table, or gnawing the bones
Of a dead culture, ...
(Welsh History)
....
There is no present in Wales
And no future;
There is only the past
Brittle with relics,
Wind bitten towers and castles
With sham ghosts;
Mouldering quarries and mines;
And an impotent people,
Sick with inbreeding,
Worrying the carcass of an old song.
(Welsh Landscape)
In A Priest to His People, as patronising a title as we could expect, he complains:
Men of the hills, wantoners, men of Wales,
With your sheep and your pigs and your ponies, your sweaty females,
How I have hated you for your irreverence, your scorn even
Of the refinements of art and the mysteries of the Church.
...
You who are indifferent to all that I can offer,
Caring not whether I blame or praise,
With your pigs and your sheep and your sons
And hollow cheeked daughters,
You will continue to unwind your days
In a crude tapestry under the jealous heavens
To affront, bewilder, yet compel my gaze.
One senses that his is not a satisfying mission. At the end of a working day, an angry line dismisses the people he serves - “I have shut the mind / on fools. The ‘phone’s frenzy / is over” (Swifts) - before releasing his mind to meditate with greater delight on the mysteries of swifts in flight about him.
Being Irish, and subjected as much as anyone to the drivel of patriotic verse, I have to admire the Welsh for their national poetry, so harshly real and so concentrated on direct observation of the people within and as part of their natural world. His poem about WB Yeats is perhaps revealing. I have always distrusted Yeats, arguably Ireland's national poet, for his patriotism based on fantasy, the core of a more vicious nationalism in my personal opinion. Thomas speaks of sitting with Yeats on the train “in mutual silence closer than lover knit” and to my mind reveals that he has indeed nothing to say, no common ground with this glacial intellect.
...
Who would have guessed the futility even of praising
Mountain and marsh and the delicate, flickering tree
To one long impervious and cold to the outward scene,
Heedless of nature’s baubles, lost in the amazing
And labyrinth paths of his own impenetrable mind?
(Memories of Yeats While Travelling to Holyhead)
RS Thomas has a very unsentimental and hard-nosed type of nationalism but I find it far more appealing than the alternatives I have encountered because it is so well rooted in the soil and hard rock of its own place. Maybe that is why I struggled with him in my school days. Something that is brutally factual can yield astonishing visions. I think this is a good way to mythologise a nation for its school-children and a good way, if there is one, to be a national poet.
'Listen, now, verse should be as natural
As the small tuber that feeds on muck
And grows slowly from obtuse soil
To the white flower of immortal beauty.'
'Natural, hell! What was it Chaucer
Said once about the long toil
That goes like blood to the poem's making?
Leave it to nature and the verse sprawls,
Limp as bindweed, if it break at all
Life's iron crust. Man, you must sweat
And rhyme your guts taut, if you'd build
Your verse a ladder.'
'You speak as though
No sunlight ever surprised the mind
Groping on its cloudy path.'
'Sunlight's a thing that needs a window
Before it enters a dark room.
Windows don't happen.'
So two old poets,
Hunched at their beer in the low haze
Of an inn parlour, while the talk ran
Noisily by them, glib with prose.
(Poetry for Supper)
You remember Davies? He died you know
With his face to the wall, as the manner is
Of the poor peasant in his stone croft
On the Welsh hills...
...
The bare floor without a rug
Or mat to soften the loud tread
Of neighbours crossing the uneasy boards
To peer at Davies with gruff words
Of meaningless comfort; before they turned
Heartless away from the stale smell
Of death in league with those dank walls.
(Death of a Peasant)
In his capacity as an Anglican priest for rural communities, RS Thomas displays a proprietorial attitude to his own people, the real folk of the Welsh hills, but I am not convinced that he makes the mistake of assuming he is one of them. From my reading about Lloyd George for example, I imagine the Welsh as Non-Conformists when they are even Christians, to whom the Anglican Church was an imposition, representative of the landowner rather than the peasant. He does not even especially admire them.
You failed me farmer, I was afraid you would
The day I saw you loitering with the cows,
Yourself one of them ...
... The two things
That could redeem your ignorance, the beauty
And grace that trees and flowers labour to teach,
Were never yours, you shut your heart against them.
You stopped your ears to the soft influence
Of birds, preferring ...
... the shallow stream
Of neighbours’ trivial talk.
For this I leave you
Alone in your harsh acres, herding pennies
Into a sock to serve you for a pillow
Through the long night that waits upon your span.
(Valedication)
When he speaks of an idiot in ‘The Fair’, he is brutally frank and sees this imbecile as representative of his people.
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 mankind
Being taken for a ride by a rich
Relation...
Sure enough, Rose Cottage, the one pretty little sight in a terrace of simple red brick dwellings, is not Welsh after all, but home to the invader:
...It was registered in the heart
Of a nation, and so, sure
Of its being. All summer
It generated the warmth
Of its blooms, red lamps
To guide you. And if you came
Too late in the bleak cold
Of winter, there were the faces
At the window, English faces,
With red cheeks, countering the thorns.
(Rose Cottage)
Thomas dislikes the English, or more accurately, he hates the way their sentiment and money has made fools of the Welsh. English money is alienating to his mind, English values are all wrong: . “...to make real the power of the pounds, / That in Wales would have gone rather / To patch up the family stocking, / Emblem of a nation’s despair.” (Rhodri)
One senses that he is disappointed in the Welsh, that he sees them as a defeated people, slowly vanishing from their countryside, unable to endure its privations.
...
We were a people bred on legends,
Warming our hands at the red past...
...
We were a people and we are so yet,
When we have finished quarrelling for crumbs
Under the table, or gnawing the bones
Of a dead culture, ...
(Welsh History)
....
There is no present in Wales
And no future;
There is only the past
Brittle with relics,
Wind bitten towers and castles
With sham ghosts;
Mouldering quarries and mines;
And an impotent people,
Sick with inbreeding,
Worrying the carcass of an old song.
(Welsh Landscape)
In A Priest to His People, as patronising a title as we could expect, he complains:
Men of the hills, wantoners, men of Wales,
With your sheep and your pigs and your ponies, your sweaty females,
How I have hated you for your irreverence, your scorn even
Of the refinements of art and the mysteries of the Church.
...
You who are indifferent to all that I can offer,
Caring not whether I blame or praise,
With your pigs and your sheep and your sons
And hollow cheeked daughters,
You will continue to unwind your days
In a crude tapestry under the jealous heavens
To affront, bewilder, yet compel my gaze.
One senses that his is not a satisfying mission. At the end of a working day, an angry line dismisses the people he serves - “I have shut the mind / on fools. The ‘phone’s frenzy / is over” (Swifts) - before releasing his mind to meditate with greater delight on the mysteries of swifts in flight about him.
Being Irish, and subjected as much as anyone to the drivel of patriotic verse, I have to admire the Welsh for their national poetry, so harshly real and so concentrated on direct observation of the people within and as part of their natural world. His poem about WB Yeats is perhaps revealing. I have always distrusted Yeats, arguably Ireland's national poet, for his patriotism based on fantasy, the core of a more vicious nationalism in my personal opinion. Thomas speaks of sitting with Yeats on the train “in mutual silence closer than lover knit” and to my mind reveals that he has indeed nothing to say, no common ground with this glacial intellect.
...
Who would have guessed the futility even of praising
Mountain and marsh and the delicate, flickering tree
To one long impervious and cold to the outward scene,
Heedless of nature’s baubles, lost in the amazing
And labyrinth paths of his own impenetrable mind?
(Memories of Yeats While Travelling to Holyhead)
RS Thomas has a very unsentimental and hard-nosed type of nationalism but I find it far more appealing than the alternatives I have encountered because it is so well rooted in the soil and hard rock of its own place. Maybe that is why I struggled with him in my school days. Something that is brutally factual can yield astonishing visions. I think this is a good way to mythologise a nation for its school-children and a good way, if there is one, to be a national poet.
'Listen, now, verse should be as natural
As the small tuber that feeds on muck
And grows slowly from obtuse soil
To the white flower of immortal beauty.'
'Natural, hell! What was it Chaucer
Said once about the long toil
That goes like blood to the poem's making?
Leave it to nature and the verse sprawls,
Limp as bindweed, if it break at all
Life's iron crust. Man, you must sweat
And rhyme your guts taut, if you'd build
Your verse a ladder.'
'You speak as though
No sunlight ever surprised the mind
Groping on its cloudy path.'
'Sunlight's a thing that needs a window
Before it enters a dark room.
Windows don't happen.'
So two old poets,
Hunched at their beer in the low haze
Of an inn parlour, while the talk ran
Noisily by them, glib with prose.
(Poetry for Supper)
August 23, 2017
I come back to the collection, especially the devotional (is that really the right word?) poetry again and again: silence; doubt; the tangible or near-tangible absence of God, told with acerbic self-criticism and the hawk-like grip on the language and imagery the poet needs.
I can't critique this, really: you know you are in the presence of greatness.
I can't critique this, really: you know you are in the presence of greatness.
May 1, 2024
R.S. Thomas was nicknamed the Ogre of Wales, rightly. He was a tangle of contradictions - the rabid Welsh nationalist who supported fire-bombing caravan parks, yet spoke with a cut-glass English accent and learned Welsh only late in life. His habit of preaching to farmers in freezing rural chapels about the evils of central heating didn't go down well either. He was, as my Mother said, a bit of a twp (Welsh: ‘dimwit’).
The earlier work tends to be the best, especially the Iago Prytherch sequence. They don't flatter national vanities, but they're taut, evocative poems - 'A Labourer', 'Welsh Landscape' and 'Welsh History.' Thomas himself favoured the later work, which still strikes me as too abstract and too derivative of William Carlos Williams. It's true there’s a rather sunless feel to his poems, but that makes the flashes of brightness all the more moving when they do occur. Thomas's poems to his late wife and his sonnet 'The Bright Field' (a rare example of telling outdoing showing) belong in this category.
Recommend the version published by Phoenix rather than Penguin.
The earlier work tends to be the best, especially the Iago Prytherch sequence. They don't flatter national vanities, but they're taut, evocative poems - 'A Labourer', 'Welsh Landscape' and 'Welsh History.' Thomas himself favoured the later work, which still strikes me as too abstract and too derivative of William Carlos Williams. It's true there’s a rather sunless feel to his poems, but that makes the flashes of brightness all the more moving when they do occur. Thomas's poems to his late wife and his sonnet 'The Bright Field' (a rare example of telling outdoing showing) belong in this category.
Recommend the version published by Phoenix rather than Penguin.
September 15, 2024
I praise you because
I envy your ability to
See these things : the blind hands
Of the aged combing sunlight
For pity ; the starved fox and
The obese pet ; the way the world
Digests itself and the thin flame
Scours. The youth enters
The brothel, and the girl enters
The nunnary, and a bell tolls.
Viruses invade the blood.
On the smudged empires the dust
Lies and in the libraries
Of the poets. The flowers wither
On love's grave. This is what
Life is, and on it your eye
Sets tearless, and the dark
Is dear to you as the light.
August 10, 2025
“... the silence
Holds with its gloved hand
The wild hawk of the mind.”
R.S. Thomas was a Welsh poet and Anglican priest noted for his nationalism and dislike of the anglicisation of Wales. His work concerns the Welsh landscape and the Welsh people, with an austere poetic voice that has been described as one of uncompromising honesty and I could not agree more. I approve of Thomas, he is plain-spoken, yet his poetic voice carries great cadence. All this made me miss Wales.
Engaged deeply with the natural world, his faith, and the Welsh heritage, Thomas challenged the cosy view of the traditional pastoral poem with the harsh reality of Welsh rural lives. He said there is a "lack of love for human beings" in his poetry - indeed, his works read more as a criticism of Welshness than a celebration, as he challenges the idyllic view of "country life" and painting a less romantic picture of its majestic landscapes in contrast to the monotonous conditions of farm work.
A Welshman to any Tourist
We've nothing vast to offer you, no deserts
Except the waste of thought
Forming from mind erosion;
No canyons where the pterodactyl's wing
Falls like a shadow.
the hills are fine, of course,
Bearded with water to suggest age
And pocked with cavarns,
One being Arthur's dormitory;
He and his knights are the bright ore
That seams our history,
But shame has kept them late in bed.
A Welsh Testament
All right, I was Welsh. Does it matter?
[...]
Even God had a Welsh name:
He spoke to him in the old language;
He was to have a peculiar care
For the Welsh people. History showed us
He was too big to be nailed to the wall
Of a stone chapel, yet still we crammed him
Between the boards of a black book.
Ruins
Somebody found a curved bone
In the ruins. A kings probably,
He said. Imperfect courtiers
We eyed it, the dropped kerchief of time.
Holds with its gloved hand
The wild hawk of the mind.”
R.S. Thomas was a Welsh poet and Anglican priest noted for his nationalism and dislike of the anglicisation of Wales. His work concerns the Welsh landscape and the Welsh people, with an austere poetic voice that has been described as one of uncompromising honesty and I could not agree more. I approve of Thomas, he is plain-spoken, yet his poetic voice carries great cadence. All this made me miss Wales.
Engaged deeply with the natural world, his faith, and the Welsh heritage, Thomas challenged the cosy view of the traditional pastoral poem with the harsh reality of Welsh rural lives. He said there is a "lack of love for human beings" in his poetry - indeed, his works read more as a criticism of Welshness than a celebration, as he challenges the idyllic view of "country life" and painting a less romantic picture of its majestic landscapes in contrast to the monotonous conditions of farm work.
A Welshman to any Tourist
We've nothing vast to offer you, no deserts
Except the waste of thought
Forming from mind erosion;
No canyons where the pterodactyl's wing
Falls like a shadow.
the hills are fine, of course,
Bearded with water to suggest age
And pocked with cavarns,
One being Arthur's dormitory;
He and his knights are the bright ore
That seams our history,
But shame has kept them late in bed.
A Welsh Testament
All right, I was Welsh. Does it matter?
[...]
Even God had a Welsh name:
He spoke to him in the old language;
He was to have a peculiar care
For the Welsh people. History showed us
He was too big to be nailed to the wall
Of a stone chapel, yet still we crammed him
Between the boards of a black book.
Ruins
Somebody found a curved bone
In the ruins. A kings probably,
He said. Imperfect courtiers
We eyed it, the dropped kerchief of time.
July 7, 2017
"This is Premier League Modern Poetry" to slightly misquote a good friend of mine; heavy weight poetry every bit as Welsh as Heaney is Irish or Tony Harrison is English. Poetry that searches beneath the surface of Welsh rural life in much the same way that the Welsh mined their hills, and faithfully carries and recreates the self same character of those hills; deep, rich language at once beautiful, rugged, intimate and affectionate but also at times stark, hard and astringent without embellishment or adornment.
He also manages to capture some of the journey of faith for the thinker and the intellectual; being totally unafraid of facing up to disappointment, hard life experience, solitude, mystery and paradox whilst asking hard questions to which there are no answers.
To quote one literary critic,
"In Christian terms, Thomas is not a poet of the transfiguration, of the resurrection, of human holiness.... He is a poet of the Cross, the unanswered prayer, the bleak trek through darkness, and his theology of Jesus, in particular, seems strange against any known traditional norm."
and the man himself, in the Times Literary Supplement,
"We are told with increasing vehemence, that this is a scientific age, that science is transforming the world, but is it not also a mechanized and impersonal age, an analytic and clinical one; an age in which under the hard gloss of affluence there can be detected the murmuring of the starved heart and the uneasy spirit?"
This man was a national treasure; nothing less.
Sublime, exquisite and challenging poetry!!!
April 3, 2016
Perhaps coming across this book of collected poems by R.S. Thomas was not the best introduction on the one hand. Its 21 books spanning from 1946-1992 can feel overwhelming, and at 550 pages it's not something I can or would want to read quickly. But what a voice! I didn't know there was this treasure trove to be discovered, and I'm elated to find there is. Not since reading Alice Oswald's 'Dart' and 'The Thing in the Gap-Stone Stile' have I lingered so greedily on a line. Thomas writes with such a sense of time and place, and it's gratifying to feel his journey through six decades in words. All imbued with this strange kind of conflict of claustrophobic intimacy and transience, which I suppose is what sometimes happens when a place for a person becomes more than a place (in this sense, Wales). I dip into this as I do with Seneca's 'Letters to a Stoic', or Philip Larkin's collected poems. No obvious relation between these, but just for the sheer joy they bring, in little intervals.
Read
March 14, 2021'I might be remembered for one or two poems. But as a man I hope people benefit of my example of one who loved to be in the open air. Loved the things of this earth and was given the ability to both hear and see them.' - R.S. Thomas, priest, poet, birdwatcher came to my attention by visiting Aberdaron - where he was a priest. His poetry to me is powerful - full of tension, his love of God is tough love and he believes this to be vice versa. Full of nature - big enough to hold many questions and to affirm many faiths.
December 26, 2023
Herein lies a precipice of human expression—strung out on the rocks of life, listening for the silent God, and surprised by the occasional blood-spilled ray of sunlight.
April 29, 2020
I’d not heard of R. S. Thomas (1913-2000) until hearing Sarah Clarkson read some of his poems on her Facebook page.
In this collection of poems, from page 1 to 533 hold the poems. The first several pages of the book (Roman numerals) is the content pages. This book doesn’t have a bio or author page. Besides the back cover, a scant 45 word summary of Thomas is given on the opening page. Pages 535 to 548 is the index.
I wrote down a list of poems that are my favorite-a count of 20.
A few of them are “Welsh Landscape”/The Minister/”Children’s Song”/”In a Country Church”/”Welsh”/”The Garden”/”Barn Owl”/”Adjustments”/”The Waiting”/”One Way”/”Shadows.”
He seemed to wrestle with his feelings about God and religion. Those thoughts are written down in poetry as a way of understanding. Poetry is his outlet. He writes poems about Wales, it’s landscape and language; people (even his wife and church members), and God.
Of all the books read this month for poetry month, Collected Poems of R. S. Thomas has been my favorite.
In this collection of poems, from page 1 to 533 hold the poems. The first several pages of the book (Roman numerals) is the content pages. This book doesn’t have a bio or author page. Besides the back cover, a scant 45 word summary of Thomas is given on the opening page. Pages 535 to 548 is the index.
I wrote down a list of poems that are my favorite-a count of 20.
A few of them are “Welsh Landscape”/The Minister/”Children’s Song”/”In a Country Church”/”Welsh”/”The Garden”/”Barn Owl”/”Adjustments”/”The Waiting”/”One Way”/”Shadows.”
He seemed to wrestle with his feelings about God and religion. Those thoughts are written down in poetry as a way of understanding. Poetry is his outlet. He writes poems about Wales, it’s landscape and language; people (even his wife and church members), and God.
Of all the books read this month for poetry month, Collected Poems of R. S. Thomas has been my favorite.
April 28, 2008
I don't think anyone "finishes" reading a book of poetry, but here are my comments to date: The late Anglican priest R.S. Thomas is one of the best kept secrets among British poets. Although he's been criticized for his brutal metaphors about "Welsh History"(one of his best known works) his poems offer insightful glimpses into life in 20th century Wales. Seamus Heaney lists him as one of his top literary influences.
June 3, 2023
"And God said: How do you know?
And I went out into the fields
At morning and it was true."
And I went out into the fields
At morning and it was true."
September 7, 2015
What resonates and what I benefit from reading the poetry of R. S. Thomas is his awareness of the hiddenness/strangeness of the holy, the acknowledgement of suffering in his voice similar to the voice of Qoheleth. His life-long examination of the human situation within his small parish and the unconscious, e.g., internal "wound", raw love, the life stripped by a life of arduous labor, reveal important human realities that often are glossed over by sentimentality, weak theology, and the denial of death. Thomas’ poetics follow (penetrate) the hard, narrow path of counter-narrative that gets at (sees) the realm of reality (vs. illusion), the far side of the cross (vs. the front side), and lives like Jacob, with a limp or vulnerability that makes it possible to live in a world where the darkness around us is deep.
. . . God is that great absence
In our lives, the empty silence
Within . . .
In a manner of speaking, Thomas’ poetry assists the reader to slow down and notice what he is seeing so as to not stumble over the mundane, every day hardness while being warmed by the sun, finding our way with reverence, embracing all of life.
No Answer
But the chemicals in
My mind were not
Ready, so I let
Him go on, dissolving
The word on my
Tongue. Friend, I had said,
Life is too short for
Religion; it takes time
To prepare a sacrifice
For the God. Give yourself
To science that reveals
All, asking no pay
For it. Knowledge is power;
The old oracle
Has not changed. The nucleus
In the atom awaits
Our bidding. Come forth,
We cry, and the dust spreads
Its carpet. Over the creeds
And masterpieces our wheels go.
. . . God is that great absence
In our lives, the empty silence
Within . . .
In a manner of speaking, Thomas’ poetry assists the reader to slow down and notice what he is seeing so as to not stumble over the mundane, every day hardness while being warmed by the sun, finding our way with reverence, embracing all of life.
No Answer
But the chemicals in
My mind were not
Ready, so I let
Him go on, dissolving
The word on my
Tongue. Friend, I had said,
Life is too short for
Religion; it takes time
To prepare a sacrifice
For the God. Give yourself
To science that reveals
All, asking no pay
For it. Knowledge is power;
The old oracle
Has not changed. The nucleus
In the atom awaits
Our bidding. Come forth,
We cry, and the dust spreads
Its carpet. Over the creeds
And masterpieces our wheels go.
March 1, 2018
It's taken me just about a fortnight to read what it took R. S. Thomas 45 years to write – and the experience has been intense. I can only describe it as having been a full-soul immersion in another person's soul. I have seen Thomas's life from the inside, looked out from his eyes and seen what he saw, felt what he felt, and thought what he thought. I have been pounded by the endless and merciless rain and wind of Wales; I have inhaled the rarified air of the moors; I have hunkered down under thatch roofs nailed with rain; I have stood under trees filled with birdsong; I have kneeled next to him on the cold, stone flags of empty churches; walked with him at the edge of the ocean; been in his study, in his bed, and at the very end of the world and the dawn of time, travelling thither and thence with his able and unbounded imagination as guide.
One of the benefits afforded a reader of a collected work that draws from a whole lifetime of thinking and poeming is the very obvious sense of a soul expanding, from a fiery spark in a still somewhat unformed and ungoverned mind, to the mind's fullest and most magnificent unfolding, to its very slight contracting at the end, into a different sort of brilliance, hardened and condensed.
I would say that R. S. Thomas was at the height of his powers in the 60s, 70s and early 80s and that some of the poems he wrote during that time are some of the most profound things I have ever read. His writings from the 40s and 50s, on the other hand, reminded me, in some small way of a minor Ted Hughes who, exposed to the same bones and stones, the same rain and pain, found himself unable and unwilling to fashion any sort of fierce beauty out of them, as Hughes might have done, instead cowering from them in fear, disgust, and bare, bilious anger. But he seems at some point to have submitted to the baptism by Welsh rain, as well as to the repeated internal scourgings by his lifelong bouts of un-belief (which possibly made his life as an Anglican priest even more difficult than it already was, even though, as he himself well knew, doubt is always a natural and critical part of any faith worth its name). And when he submitted himself, to his life and to his soul, just as they were, he seems to have undergone a resurrection of sorts: shedding his angry young man persona and the unfortunate edge of peevishness that tainted some of his early efforts, and emerging, shiny and beautiful as a snake in his new poet's skin, the fire still in the belly, but all signs of petulance left behind. R. S. Thomas, poet, had become the Great Poet R. S. Thomas.
One of the benefits afforded a reader of a collected work that draws from a whole lifetime of thinking and poeming is the very obvious sense of a soul expanding, from a fiery spark in a still somewhat unformed and ungoverned mind, to the mind's fullest and most magnificent unfolding, to its very slight contracting at the end, into a different sort of brilliance, hardened and condensed.
I would say that R. S. Thomas was at the height of his powers in the 60s, 70s and early 80s and that some of the poems he wrote during that time are some of the most profound things I have ever read. His writings from the 40s and 50s, on the other hand, reminded me, in some small way of a minor Ted Hughes who, exposed to the same bones and stones, the same rain and pain, found himself unable and unwilling to fashion any sort of fierce beauty out of them, as Hughes might have done, instead cowering from them in fear, disgust, and bare, bilious anger. But he seems at some point to have submitted to the baptism by Welsh rain, as well as to the repeated internal scourgings by his lifelong bouts of un-belief (which possibly made his life as an Anglican priest even more difficult than it already was, even though, as he himself well knew, doubt is always a natural and critical part of any faith worth its name). And when he submitted himself, to his life and to his soul, just as they were, he seems to have undergone a resurrection of sorts: shedding his angry young man persona and the unfortunate edge of peevishness that tainted some of his early efforts, and emerging, shiny and beautiful as a snake in his new poet's skin, the fire still in the belly, but all signs of petulance left behind. R. S. Thomas, poet, had become the Great Poet R. S. Thomas.
March 2, 2025
"for the failure of language there is no redress".
most of Thomas's poems are seemingly impenetrable, and i can't begin to imagine how they must be if you aren't Welsh or haven't lived in Wales. his relationship to his country is like sort of beleaguered patriotism. he cannot stand how his country has bent the knee to the english, and he can caricature the welsh as idiot bumpkins. his fury originates in his romanticism for a wales that never was; never will be. perfectly virgin fields and unperverted hills.
you quickly realise that RS Thomas is one english housing development from being a complete misanthrope, but his poems on faith are of a completely different cloth. he has endless hope in the face of his crippling doubt. he finds whispers of a seemingly imperfect god in the creaks of empty church pews, and in the "untenanted" cross at calvary.
my favourite thing about RS Thomas is that he cannot be defined. he is a complete contradiction. he was completely arrogant, yet his furies were at home in his mirror. constantly unsure of his faith, identity, and of his own nation, his boldest statements came at the end when remembering his life and his marriage. the courage and honesty that it took to write most of these poems is astonishing to me. his stark words are a constant companion.
most of Thomas's poems are seemingly impenetrable, and i can't begin to imagine how they must be if you aren't Welsh or haven't lived in Wales. his relationship to his country is like sort of beleaguered patriotism. he cannot stand how his country has bent the knee to the english, and he can caricature the welsh as idiot bumpkins. his fury originates in his romanticism for a wales that never was; never will be. perfectly virgin fields and unperverted hills.
you quickly realise that RS Thomas is one english housing development from being a complete misanthrope, but his poems on faith are of a completely different cloth. he has endless hope in the face of his crippling doubt. he finds whispers of a seemingly imperfect god in the creaks of empty church pews, and in the "untenanted" cross at calvary.
my favourite thing about RS Thomas is that he cannot be defined. he is a complete contradiction. he was completely arrogant, yet his furies were at home in his mirror. constantly unsure of his faith, identity, and of his own nation, his boldest statements came at the end when remembering his life and his marriage. the courage and honesty that it took to write most of these poems is astonishing to me. his stark words are a constant companion.
March 26, 2024
A bit like the music of J.S. Bach, there is a whole world here. Certainly among the top 3 poets the British Isles produced in the 20th century (and possibly the best), Thomas produced an impressively large amount of very high quality work.
One of the more interesting things about his style (I find) is that he quite early on largely eschewed rhyme, meter, and the many other musical elements of poetry. In my experience, he's the only poet to be able to pull that off and not only become better, but become great.
It's quite something to behold. I think the key is that his ideas and imagery were so very strong that they were easily able to stand on their own merits, free of any musical support.
When lesser writers attempt that, we just end up with dull prose chopped up into lines, and they may as well not have bothered.
One of the more interesting things about his style (I find) is that he quite early on largely eschewed rhyme, meter, and the many other musical elements of poetry. In my experience, he's the only poet to be able to pull that off and not only become better, but become great.
It's quite something to behold. I think the key is that his ideas and imagery were so very strong that they were easily able to stand on their own merits, free of any musical support.
When lesser writers attempt that, we just end up with dull prose chopped up into lines, and they may as well not have bothered.
January 1, 2025
This is the first R.S. Thomas poem I read which that made me love this grumpy poet from the first line, enough to read every poem he's written, enough to have carried his collected poems around with me for months.
It's called "The Bright Field"
I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the pearl
of great price, the one field that had
treasure in it. I realize now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying
on to a receeding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you
It's called "The Bright Field"
I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the pearl
of great price, the one field that had
treasure in it. I realize now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying
on to a receeding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you
January 31, 2018
I have owned this book since it was published. 28 years later, I read it again. It has held up extremely well, and Thomas's prophecies, and his deep roots in the culture of the North, are clearer than ever. Not only is it a testament to craft and wrestling with faith, but it is, now, generations after the poems began and long after Thomas has physically left us, the most timely book of all. Its critique of the intersections of faith, individuality, nation, faith and mechanical culture is piercing. Set it beside Hauge, for good company.
January 30, 2021
God, Wales, the absence of God, geography, history, life, death, huge cosmic questions and precisely observed minutiae ... not to mention moments of quirky humour and sweeping romanticism, often in highly unexpected places. Plus an almost Peckinpah-like hatred of modernity. This is a poetry to immerse oneself in, wrestle with and return to.
March 24, 2019
After Jericho
There is an aggression of fact
to be resisted successfully
only in verse, that fights language
with its own tools. Smile, poet
among the ruins of a vocabulary
you blew your trumpet against.
It was a conscript army; your words,
every one of them, are volunteers.
There is an aggression of fact
to be resisted successfully
only in verse, that fights language
with its own tools. Smile, poet
among the ruins of a vocabulary
you blew your trumpet against.
It was a conscript army; your words,
every one of them, are volunteers.
January 15, 2022
The first part is a slog (poems about Welsh life and nature, with an unpleasant misogynistic streak), but once he gets into poems about God and religion, he comes into his own with some really good stuff.
December 10, 2021
Austere and wonderful. Blog to follow, I hope.
August 4, 2022
And I thought Larkin was gloomy….. There is a stark beauty in many of these poems though. Favourite (less bleak than most): “The Bright Field”.
April 19, 2023
The God bothering stuff is worth it for the pessimistic but beautiful nature poetry and the bitter, sentimental, Celtic nationalism.
Want to read
November 22, 2024Ch4 We have reserved humiliating torment for disbelievers.
April 20, 2025
Four and a half stars
For me, the earlier poems are, on the whole, better than the later. There are some excellent poems. mostly everything is worth reading.
For me, the earlier poems are, on the whole, better than the later. There are some excellent poems. mostly everything is worth reading.
February 28, 2018
A fabulous poet. Thomas was a cleric as well as a poet. His work is original, finely crafted, unpretentious, unflinching, and tough. Most of the poems are concretely grounded in the landscape of wells; others are rooted in the interior landscape, where Thomas roams, sometimes as believer, sometimes as stoic. That said, there is a broad spectrum of particular topics, inspirations, stories, and scenes.
December 1, 2010
R.S. Thomas was a Welsh clergyman posted to a rural parish in Wales and his poetry (particularly early on) reflects this. Poems discuss the landscape, individuals and society he finds himself immersed in and how they relate to each other. He finds the farmers, though illiterate, unable to appreciate the beauty of their surroundings and incapable of a profound relationship with God, admirable simply because of their capability to scratch a life out of their hills and valleys. He also notes the changes coming to farms in Wales - famously in Cynddylan on a Tractor. Later, many of his poems discuss God, who seems to come and go from Thomas' life, causing considerable distress, even despair, when absent. Another theme seems to be reflecting on his earlier poems and earlier life.
I once tried out a few poems from this collection on a Frenchman and an American woman; they didn't appreciate it at all. It made me wonder if you have to have lived in rural Wales (as I have) to really appreciate the early works. I would still recommend this to any poetry lover - Thomas is a monument of post-war Welsh literature in English.
I once tried out a few poems from this collection on a Frenchman and an American woman; they didn't appreciate it at all. It made me wonder if you have to have lived in rural Wales (as I have) to really appreciate the early works. I would still recommend this to any poetry lover - Thomas is a monument of post-war Welsh literature in English.
July 24, 2016
I stumbled onto poems by Thomas online and knew I had to read more. He was a Welsh poet/priest and his poems reflect that, being full of transcendent spiritual questions and answers. I had to get this volume through interlibrary loan, so it is not widely available. Halfway through this volume I went online and ordered my own paperback to keep, because I had post-its on too many pages that I had thought I might photocopy to read again. The best part is that he wrote so many worth keeping.
January 27, 2015
I have just finished reading this large collection. I read it four poems a day until I finished it. I must say that his works are beyond me. I did not develop an understanding of what he was saying, and none of them "rang my bell." It was discipline of determination. I had started. I would finish, but I can not really say I did not like them as I never really understood any of them.
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