Welsh Journals

Further Poems from the Forces A little anthology Personal Eisteddfod PRINCES of sad, satirical melody, To whose music stars and sky Are incidental and for whom trees rest. Tamers of that nocturnal beast No lord can ever master, To Wales must go the honour, Night ringed with song in Africa, The nostalgic dream fought like despair, The coaldust doorway .dripping in the rain, And the coalblue face at the windowpane. Under the pine trees, "brown with pine needles, Under prisms flung by decadent branches Against the diamonded sky, each song's gem, Aberystwyth, Y Delyn Aur, Jerusalem, These were wrestled with at our Eisteddfod, Sad voice and risible tune concerted In a magical Celtic Chorus and that threnodic Welsh song you love so much, The song like a yoke or a labourer's touch. Night closed. We held rhythm like a lion. It might rend from us and soon Loose our bonds of voices. A brute Of music stalked through the night, elegy to the nkht. Under our lids the unhappy offspring, Tortured child of our singing, Conceived, welled up and then limb Charged, disgorged from its womb. Darlings of the choir of the night, Raiders of the depot of the heart, This is the portent we must cringe for, This is the mountain we must ask for, Before we are paid on the hill, Before our voices are still. G. A. WAGNER P.S.-This poem, needless to say I hope, refers to an Eisteddfod held by the Third Battalion Welsh Guards in North Africa last year.-G. A. WAGNER.