Welsh Journals

the subject offers splendid opportunities for a ro- mantic sea-poet, but as it is, the possibilities of this tale of desperate wreckers and wild coast are hardly realised to the full for one thing the poet adopts too sternly moral an attitude to get the most out of his themes, witness the lines Pentref yw di-Dduw, di-dda, Ue'r eillia Ilawer ellyll." and, Cadwed Duw bob calon frau Rhag mynd i greigiau Grigyll." Very excellent sentiments, no doubt, for real life, but they narrow down the sphere of poetry to very small limits your poet must sometimes avail himself of the privilege of make-believe, to show a somewhat more sympathetic attitude towards highwaymen and smugglers and pirates and such-like lawbreakers, if they are to supply him with the materials of poetry. Characteristic, too, in the same poem is the prominence given to the duel of the lawyers the poet seems more at home in the law-court than on the storm-swept cliffs. Three of the Iyrics-" Y Morwr Mwyn," Y Morwr Bach," and Llongwr yn Canu'n lach i'w Gariad" — are strongly mediaeval in their attitude towards the sea only the more mournful aspects of it are touched upon it is an abode of tempest and death a cruel sundering medium between lovers and kindred; the poems, too, might have been written by men who had never been within sight of the sea, and they are not so much sea-poems as poems describing the shore aspect of a sailor's life. They deal with the sadness of parting before a voyage, the tragedy of a sailor lad's death far from his native land, and the contrast between a watery grave and one in a quiet village churchyard. My baby, it's time for slumber, For heaven is growing dark. The shadowy trees without number Are sleeping in the park. Alun's "Can Gwraig y Pysgotwr The Fisher's wife's Song )—reaches a very high stan- dard, however. The poetic impressions of the sea come at first hand, and there is a deep poetic feeling for its irresistible might amid the thunder of the surf on the sand, the wave, like the old sea of Words- worth becomes a cruel, inexorable personality to the poor fisher's wife's whose husband is battling with its fury. In the verse of another nineteenth century poet too, Glasynys's "Murmuron y Gragen," one finds all the freshness of first hand impressions, inspired as it was by the wild scenery of Cegin y Cythraul (" The Devil's Kitchen,") — in his lines one can hear the roar of the back-drawn shingle and see the spreading white surges: Hyd y faesdon crwydrai'r wendon gan ymdaenu dros y traeth." Sometimes the gull's weird cry rings out over a wild scene: Creglais oer ac annaearol ydyw creglais gwylan wen." Sometimes the poet hears in the sound of the waves the beat of a greater sea upon a greater shore tonnau'r r nos ar draethau'r dydd or gazes away into endless vistas of loveliness along the golden pathway of light which the setting sun casts along the waters. The latter half of the last century, then, saw the sea-lyric established at last in our literature, ready to the hands of a later school of poets,-Elflon Wyn, Elfed and their contemporaries, much of whose best work deals with the sea. E.R.W. SONG: TO BABY. Green lamps are lit' in the meadow, And a large lamp in the blue, That flowers may see their shadow, And God His ltan-aud you! Tudor E. Evans.