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Everyman Poetry Library #7
R.S. Thomas
EVERYMAN'S POETRY LIBRARY: This new series of the world's greatest poetry features the hallmarks of Everyman Classics: top-quality production and reader-friendly design along with helpful notes and critiques. Each edition is also a great value, especially for those readers beginning to explore the work of this remarkable poet.
- GenresPoetry20th Century
128 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 15, 1997
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About the author
R.S. Thomas
92 books57 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 - 23 of 23 reviews
November 14, 2020
"The last quarter of the moon
of Jesus gives way
to the dark; the serpent
digests the egg. Here
on my knees in this stone
church, that is full only
of the silent congregation
of shadows and the sea's
sound, it is easy to believe
Yeats was right. Just as though
choirs had not sung, shells
have swallowed them; the tide laps
at the Bible; the bell fetches
no people to the brittle miracle
of bread. The sand is waiting
for the running back of the grains
in the wall into its blond
glass. Religion is over, and
what will emerge from the body
of the new moon, no one
can say.
But a voice sounds
in my ear. Why so fast,
mortal? These very seas
are baptized. The parish
has a saint's name time cannot
unfrock. In cities that
have outgrown their promise people
are becoming pilgrims
again, if not to this place,
then to the recreation of it
in their own spirits. You must remain
kneeling. Even as this moon
making its way through the earth's
cumbersome shadow, prayer, too,
has its phases." R.S. Thomas
of Jesus gives way
to the dark; the serpent
digests the egg. Here
on my knees in this stone
church, that is full only
of the silent congregation
of shadows and the sea's
sound, it is easy to believe
Yeats was right. Just as though
choirs had not sung, shells
have swallowed them; the tide laps
at the Bible; the bell fetches
no people to the brittle miracle
of bread. The sand is waiting
for the running back of the grains
in the wall into its blond
glass. Religion is over, and
what will emerge from the body
of the new moon, no one
can say.
But a voice sounds
in my ear. Why so fast,
mortal? These very seas
are baptized. The parish
has a saint's name time cannot
unfrock. In cities that
have outgrown their promise people
are becoming pilgrims
again, if not to this place,
then to the recreation of it
in their own spirits. You must remain
kneeling. Even as this moon
making its way through the earth's
cumbersome shadow, prayer, too,
has its phases." R.S. Thomas
March 14, 2012
Thomas should have a much bigger following in circles interested in poetry with explicitly "sacred" or religious concerns; i.e. many of my friends and colleagues. A unique and fascinating Welsh priest and poet, his body of work is distinctive and well-represented in this small volume. I also recommend POEMS OF RS THOMAS, and RS THOMAS--SELECTED POEMS, 1946-1968 for the early stuff.
October 23, 2008
A crusty, solitary Welsh vicar feels the universe.
October 3, 2023
In his devoted and often angry defense of Wales and her people against the onset of the "machines", Thomas reminds me of Wendell Berry. In his honesty about the rigors of parish life amidst a rough people -- and his questions about and for the God who made them -- he reminds me a bit of Frederick Buechner. But like both Berry and Buechner, the anger and the honesty spring, ultimately, from a vast and divinely-sustained reservoir of love that seems constant amidst the clamoring changes of the age in which this poet-priest ministered. Thomas, like his native land, is often burdened with an ethos of weighty gloom, yet this very gloom is what make the clarity of his radiant moments all the more luminous.
Reading Thomas daily has been a revelation for me over the last two months, both in terms of style and substance. The first half of my current commonplace book is littered with passages from this collection. I look forward to coming back to him, and often.
"The Country Clergy"
I see them working in old rectories
By the sun's light, by candlelight,
Venerable men, their black cloth
A little dusty, a little green
With holy mildew. And yet their skulls,
Ripening over so many prayers,
Toppled into the same grave
With oafs and yokels. They left no books,
Memorial to their lonely thought
In grey parishes; rather they wrote
On men's hearts and in the minds
Of young children sublime words
Too soon forgotten. God in his time
Or out of time will correct this.
Reading Thomas daily has been a revelation for me over the last two months, both in terms of style and substance. The first half of my current commonplace book is littered with passages from this collection. I look forward to coming back to him, and often.
"The Country Clergy"
I see them working in old rectories
By the sun's light, by candlelight,
Venerable men, their black cloth
A little dusty, a little green
With holy mildew. And yet their skulls,
Ripening over so many prayers,
Toppled into the same grave
With oafs and yokels. They left no books,
Memorial to their lonely thought
In grey parishes; rather they wrote
On men's hearts and in the minds
Of young children sublime words
Too soon forgotten. God in his time
Or out of time will correct this.
February 25, 2025
I’m sure I’d heard good things about Thomas, but for some reason this collection of his poems (with an appealing enough cover, I might add) sat in my piles of books I’m intending to read, but didn’t become a priority. I finally threw it in a small pile of books I was bringing to England, thinking it would be a fitting collection. And I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed his poems. Not all of them hit with the same intensity, and I specifically found myself most drawn to his religious poetry. With the amount of poems where he talks about nature, hard-working locals, or wrestling with his faith, his poems immediately reminded me of Wendell Berry, who I had a similar experience with when I finally sat down to read some of his poetry.
My favourite poems from this collection were:
Affinity
Peasant Greeting
A Priest to His People
The Old Language
The Labourer
Hireling
To a Young Poet
They
Once
Echoes
The Island
His Condescensions Are Short-Lived
Poste Restante
The Chapel
The Bright Field
The Empty Church
Testimonies
My favourite poems from this collection were:
Affinity
Peasant Greeting
A Priest to His People
The Old Language
The Labourer
Hireling
To a Young Poet
They
Once
Echoes
The Island
His Condescensions Are Short-Lived
Poste Restante
The Chapel
The Bright Field
The Empty Church
Testimonies
December 31, 2020
A lovely book of poetry that seems poignantly perfect for 2020.
From the first line of the introduction: "From the first, the poems of R.S. Thomas have been challenging statements about isolation, written in isolation"
Here's to hoping 2021 brings with it less isolation as the year wears onward, but for now, do yourself a favor and dip into this challenging yet beautiful work.
From the first line of the introduction: "From the first, the poems of R.S. Thomas have been challenging statements about isolation, written in isolation"
Here's to hoping 2021 brings with it less isolation as the year wears onward, but for now, do yourself a favor and dip into this challenging yet beautiful work.
January 14, 2023
It is hard to put into words how much I enjoyed/was moved/inspired by this anthology of the profound yet curmudgeonly Welsh priest/poet.
January 8, 2018
I haven't read much poetry. But, author Philip Yancey, a non-fiction author whose work I have read and enjoyed, recommended the poetry of R.S. Thomas in an essay that Yancey wrote last summer for the Washington Post. I got this book of Thomas poems, and have slowly read (and occasionally re-read) the poems in it over the fall and early winter. To my surprise, I really like many of them. The poems are short, usually 20 to 40 lines. Unlike other modern poets I've tried to read, I understand the language and style of most of Thomas's poems. (I guess that means they're more "accessible" than some of the other poetry I've tried.) To give you a feel for Thomas's subject matter and style, I can do no better than quote this excerpt from the Poetry Foundation's biography ofThomas
"Recognized as one of the leading poets of modern Wales, R. S. Thomas writes about the people of his country in a style that some critics have compared to that nation's harsh and rugged terrain. Using few of the common poetic devices, Thomas's work exhibits what Alan Brownjohn of the New Statesman calls a 'cold, telling purity of language.' James F. Knapp of Twentieth Century Literature explains that 'the poetic world which emerges from the verse of R. S. Thomas is a world of lonely Welsh farms and of the farmers who endure the harshness of their hill country. The vision is realistic and merciless.' Despite the often grim nature of his subject matter, Thomas's poems are ultimately life-affirming. 'What I'm after,' John Mole of Phoenix quotes Thomas explaining, 'is to demonstrate that man is spiritual.' As Louis Sasso remarks in Library Journal, 'Thomas's poems are sturdy, worldly creations filled with compassion, love, doubt, and irony. They make one feel joy in being part of the human race.'"from the Poetry Foundation bio of R.S. Thomas
Read
April 10, 2023These collection can be divided into two overall themes: 1) poems that illustrate Wales as a dying cultural wasteland, filled with the last vestiges of a pre-modern people, themselves nothing but shambling corpses waiting for the end, and 2) deeply religious poetry where Thomas grapples with God, both fearing him, sometimes hating him, but ultimately returning to him. I much preferred the second grouping of poems, interspersed with some beautiful verses about becoming a father and a devastating poem about the death of his wife. This is great, beautiful, devotional poetry with some bitterness and punch to it as well.
Priest And Peasant
You are ill, Davies, ill in mind
An old canker, to your kind
Peculiar, has laid waste the brain's
Potential richness in delight
And beauty; and your body grows
Awry like an old thorn for lack
Of the soil's depth; and sickness
there
Uncurls slowly its small tongues
Of fungus that shall, thickening,
swell
And choke you, while your few
leaves
Are green still.
And so you work
In the wet fields and suffer pain
And loneliness as a tree takes
The night's darkness, the day's
rain
While I watch you, and pray for
you,
And so increase my small store
Of credit in the bank of God,
Who sees you suffer and me pray
And touches you with the sun's
ray,
That heals not, yet blinds my eyes
And seals my lips as Job's were
sealed
Imperiously in the old days.
--
The Coming
And God held in his hand
A small globe. Look he said.
The son looked. Far off,
As through water, he saw
A scorched land of fierce
Colour. The light burned
There; crusted buildings
Cast their shadows: a bright
Serpent, A river
Uncoiled itself, radiant
With slime.
On a bare
Hill a bare tree saddened
The sky. many People
Held out their thin arms
To it, as though waiting
For a vanished April
To return to its crossed
Boughs. The son watched
Them. Let me go there, he said.
--
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 realise now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying
on to a receding 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.
--
Echoes
What is this? said God. The obstinacy
Of its refusal to answer
Enraged him. He struck it
Those great blows it resounds
With still. It glowered at
Him, but remained dumb.
Turning on its slow axis
Of pain, reflecting the year
In its seasons. Nature bandaged
Its wounds. Healing in
The smooth sun, it became
Fair. God looked at it
Again, reminded of
An intention. They shall answer
For you, he said. And at once
There were trees with birds
Singing, and through the trees
Animals wandered, drinking
Their own scent, conceding
An absence. Where are you?
He called, and riding the echo
The shapes came, slender
As trees, but with white hands,
Curious to build. On the altars
They made him the red blood
Told what he wished to hear.
--
The Empty Church
They laid this stone trap
for him, enticing him with candles,
as though he would come like some huge moth
out of the darkness to beat there.
Ah, he had burned himself
before in the human flame
and escaped, leaving the reason
torn. He will not come any more
to our lure. Why, then, do I kneel still
striking my prayers on a stone
heart? Is it in hope one
of them will ignite yet and throw
on its illuminated walls the shadow
of someone greater than I can understand?
Priest And Peasant
You are ill, Davies, ill in mind
An old canker, to your kind
Peculiar, has laid waste the brain's
Potential richness in delight
And beauty; and your body grows
Awry like an old thorn for lack
Of the soil's depth; and sickness
there
Uncurls slowly its small tongues
Of fungus that shall, thickening,
swell
And choke you, while your few
leaves
Are green still.
And so you work
In the wet fields and suffer pain
And loneliness as a tree takes
The night's darkness, the day's
rain
While I watch you, and pray for
you,
And so increase my small store
Of credit in the bank of God,
Who sees you suffer and me pray
And touches you with the sun's
ray,
That heals not, yet blinds my eyes
And seals my lips as Job's were
sealed
Imperiously in the old days.
--
The Coming
And God held in his hand
A small globe. Look he said.
The son looked. Far off,
As through water, he saw
A scorched land of fierce
Colour. The light burned
There; crusted buildings
Cast their shadows: a bright
Serpent, A river
Uncoiled itself, radiant
With slime.
On a bare
Hill a bare tree saddened
The sky. many People
Held out their thin arms
To it, as though waiting
For a vanished April
To return to its crossed
Boughs. The son watched
Them. Let me go there, he said.
--
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 realise now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying
on to a receding 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.
--
Echoes
What is this? said God. The obstinacy
Of its refusal to answer
Enraged him. He struck it
Those great blows it resounds
With still. It glowered at
Him, but remained dumb.
Turning on its slow axis
Of pain, reflecting the year
In its seasons. Nature bandaged
Its wounds. Healing in
The smooth sun, it became
Fair. God looked at it
Again, reminded of
An intention. They shall answer
For you, he said. And at once
There were trees with birds
Singing, and through the trees
Animals wandered, drinking
Their own scent, conceding
An absence. Where are you?
He called, and riding the echo
The shapes came, slender
As trees, but with white hands,
Curious to build. On the altars
They made him the red blood
Told what he wished to hear.
--
The Empty Church
They laid this stone trap
for him, enticing him with candles,
as though he would come like some huge moth
out of the darkness to beat there.
Ah, he had burned himself
before in the human flame
and escaped, leaving the reason
torn. He will not come any more
to our lure. Why, then, do I kneel still
striking my prayers on a stone
heart? Is it in hope one
of them will ignite yet and throw
on its illuminated walls the shadow
of someone greater than I can understand?
May 8, 2018
I bought this edition of R.S. Thomas' 'Selected Poems' when it came out in the mid-1990s - around the time that the Welsh former priest was nominated for the Nobel Prize - and have dipped in and out of it ever since. This was the first time that I had read it cover to cover, however (by virtue of being laid up with a bad back).
'Bleak' is the adjective most commonly applied to Thomas' poetry and 'solitary' to the man himself. He wrote about life in one small corner of the world and revisited familiar themes. How easy, then, it would be to write one of those reviews 'in the style of'. Fortunately, I resisted. The best of his short verses build ineluctably into powerful structures like grey parish churches from Welsh granite. 'An Old Woman' concludes:
'...and now and then she laughs,
A high, shrill, mirthless laugh, half cough, half whistle,
Tuneless and dry as east wind through a thistle.'
'In Church', one of many questioning the poet's faith ends:
'There is no other sound
In the darkness but the sound of a man
Breathing, testing his faith
On emptiness, nailing his questions
One by one to an untenanted cross.'
Most moving of all is the last poem in the collection, lines written on the death of his wife of more than fifty years:
'And she,
who in life
had done everything
with a bird's grace,
opened her bill now
for the shedding
of one sigh no
heavier than a feather.'
Thomas was also known for his opposition to the erosion of Welsh culture by that of England. I can empathise with his perspective and recall a heated discussion about the issue with friends in Suffolk long ago. Alongside his unfashionable concern with God, this may add to his difficulty for some English readers.
This copy in the Everyman's series cost me £1 when it was new. I cannot imagine a pound better spent.
'Bleak' is the adjective most commonly applied to Thomas' poetry and 'solitary' to the man himself. He wrote about life in one small corner of the world and revisited familiar themes. How easy, then, it would be to write one of those reviews 'in the style of'. Fortunately, I resisted. The best of his short verses build ineluctably into powerful structures like grey parish churches from Welsh granite. 'An Old Woman' concludes:
'...and now and then she laughs,
A high, shrill, mirthless laugh, half cough, half whistle,
Tuneless and dry as east wind through a thistle.'
'In Church', one of many questioning the poet's faith ends:
'There is no other sound
In the darkness but the sound of a man
Breathing, testing his faith
On emptiness, nailing his questions
One by one to an untenanted cross.'
Most moving of all is the last poem in the collection, lines written on the death of his wife of more than fifty years:
'And she,
who in life
had done everything
with a bird's grace,
opened her bill now
for the shedding
of one sigh no
heavier than a feather.'
Thomas was also known for his opposition to the erosion of Welsh culture by that of England. I can empathise with his perspective and recall a heated discussion about the issue with friends in Suffolk long ago. Alongside his unfashionable concern with God, this may add to his difficulty for some English readers.
This copy in the Everyman's series cost me £1 when it was new. I cannot imagine a pound better spent.
November 20, 2019
I enjoyed this book on the whole, although I’m still not sure what my overall impression of Thomas’s poetry is. Many of these are difficult poems, I felt, especially among the earlier works, and I didn’t know what to make of many of them. But there is a lot of beauty here, too.
I was a little troubled by the attitude that seems to be taken towards the rural people, and their lives, who are the subjects of many of the earlier poems. I’m not sure if that’s a fair reaction. I started reading this book at the same time as the novel Driftless by David Rhodes, which centers rural Wisconsin lives, and that created some interesting resonances.
I enjoyed seeing how the poet’s style and focus developed and changed over the course of this collection. I connected most with some of the later poems — those written in Aberdaron, a village I visited (including St. Hywyn’s Church, the last parish Thomas served as priest, and where I bought this book) two years ago. I intend to go back there someday.
I was a little troubled by the attitude that seems to be taken towards the rural people, and their lives, who are the subjects of many of the earlier poems. I’m not sure if that’s a fair reaction. I started reading this book at the same time as the novel Driftless by David Rhodes, which centers rural Wisconsin lives, and that created some interesting resonances.
I enjoyed seeing how the poet’s style and focus developed and changed over the course of this collection. I connected most with some of the later poems — those written in Aberdaron, a village I visited (including St. Hywyn’s Church, the last parish Thomas served as priest, and where I bought this book) two years ago. I intend to go back there someday.
December 31, 2023
Reading 113 poems in 3 days (to complete my 2023 reading challenge) gave me a facile understanding of Mr Thomas’ themes (Welsh countryside, is there a God?) and favourite words (halo, bones, Bosworth, field, mirror, earth).
Particularly enjoyed his relationship poems A Marriage and The Way of It. And his evisceration of another poet in Unposted. He’s a miserable bugger but enjoyably so.
Particularly enjoyed his relationship poems A Marriage and The Way of It. And his evisceration of another poet in Unposted. He’s a miserable bugger but enjoyably so.
January 9, 2024
A really excellent collection of poetry of sincere religious reflections from a disaffected country priest and honest Welsh separatist/traditionalist. Truly, an above average bunch of poems, and I'm hard to please when it comes to such collections.
April 17, 2018
beautiful. I want to read more of his work.
February 13, 2022
I’m a Twm trying to become a Iago
May 29, 2024
Some poems were better than others, my favourite were those concerning God and Welsh identity (or both). Good overall
July 20, 2016
This Welsh rural Church minister wrote psychologically insightful poetry about the physically bleak lives of the old peasant farmers, and the spiritually bleak lives of the younger generation and the English newcomers who had given themselves over to the age of the Machine. Decay is everywhere,
"the smashed faces
of the stone farms with the stone trickle
of their tears down the hills' side."
He wrestles with his own religious doubt in a time of religious decay, seeing God's church as a
"stone trap
for him, enticing him with candles,
as though he would come like some huge moth
out of the darkness to beat there. (...)
He will not come any more
to our lure. Why, then, do I kneel still?"
His religious sense of landscape and blood sacrifice makes even his Christian imagery seem closer to the druids. Personally ascetic, he and his long-suffering wife allowed no appliances in the house as they fought the Machine. But Thomas' understanding of the science of the natural world was so incorrect (he thought the dark phase of the moon was caused by its moving through the Earth's shadow; he thought that something "in orbit" was "out of the reach of gravity's control") that his opinions about anything scientific are valueless.
Nominated for the Nobel Prize more than once, his poetry is not to everyone's taste. It is like his own description of "An Old Woman":
"Sharp as a bird, and now and then she laughs,
A high, shrill, mirthless laugh, half cough, half whistle,
Tuneless and dry as east wind through a thistle."
"the smashed faces
of the stone farms with the stone trickle
of their tears down the hills' side."
He wrestles with his own religious doubt in a time of religious decay, seeing God's church as a
"stone trap
for him, enticing him with candles,
as though he would come like some huge moth
out of the darkness to beat there. (...)
He will not come any more
to our lure. Why, then, do I kneel still?"
His religious sense of landscape and blood sacrifice makes even his Christian imagery seem closer to the druids. Personally ascetic, he and his long-suffering wife allowed no appliances in the house as they fought the Machine. But Thomas' understanding of the science of the natural world was so incorrect (he thought the dark phase of the moon was caused by its moving through the Earth's shadow; he thought that something "in orbit" was "out of the reach of gravity's control") that his opinions about anything scientific are valueless.
Nominated for the Nobel Prize more than once, his poetry is not to everyone's taste. It is like his own description of "An Old Woman":
"Sharp as a bird, and now and then she laughs,
A high, shrill, mirthless laugh, half cough, half whistle,
Tuneless and dry as east wind through a thistle."
April 23, 2009
Great collection that left me wanting to read more of Thomas. Also some of the best Christian poetry I've ever read. Thomas accomplishes this through the sheer physicality of his verse. You get your fingernails dirty reading these lines, which are often rooted in the Welsh countryside, where Thomas was pastor for so many years. He knew the people (farmers, peasants, etc.) -- and the land, and for him that was an authentic pathway to God. However, as the collection went on, Thomas gets a bit more abstract: Doubt, Faith, God; and the increasingly Material World -- that Thomas calls "The Machine." This is serious stuff handled in a way that should appeal to believer or nonbeliver alike. You never doubt his sincerity, his voice. And you never feel like you're being given a sermon, which adds to the authority of these poems. Awesome.
October 8, 2016
Some beautifully dark, bitter poetry here, by a minister keen to see his flock share his concern for religion and language, yet gradually resigning himself to them leaving both behind.
"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"
"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"
September 16, 2009
beautiful poetry about ministry in rural wales. the struggles and beauty of living in place. A great theology of place and people
July 8, 2015
Generally enjoyed the later poems more than the earlier ones.
August 21, 2012
the hard life of the farmer in wales
a priest speaks from his gut about god church and parishioners
great engaging poetry from a man who loved nature in all its guises
August 12, 2014
A selection that evokes much of Wales, the land and faith.
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews