Welsh Journals

-patience and ingenuity streamed into books, once perhaps the darlings of their day, but alas! destined to be swept aside into oblivion by the heedless, inexorable tide of time-time whose pulse for ever shakes fierce through all the worlds! I can see it all clearly and vividly before me now, and it must certainly seem incredulous that one so young could have sensed the mute tragedy there, could have, with a preco- cious heart maybe, ached with lonely pity for it all! For often less blessed than cursed are those who carry with them through life more than a fair share of intense, all-terrifying imagination! As all those who are older than myself must know, Hugh Humphreys was a printer and publisher of books in a very large way, not only of penny trifles like Rhodd Y Mam but also of many quite ponderous tomes. Indeed he must have been another Faber and Faber to the poets of his day, judging by the myriad left-overs to be seen in hopeless dis- array on the various shelves and elsewhere. He had also reprinted much famous Welsh literature: The Mabinogion, Gorchestion Beirdd Cymru, Y Tri Aderyn, Drych y Prif Oesoedd, Dafydd ab Gwilym and Iolo Mor- gannwg's Geiriadur y Bardd among others-Iolo, that Wyddfa of a man, if somewhat badly cracked here and there! My wages for the work done there were six shillings a week if I re- member rightly, but I had in addition the privilege to take home with me and keep, one copy of any left-overs if there should happen to be several of them. Needless to say, by the time my task was accomplished, I had gathered for myself quite a little library. To be continued in the October issue. FORGOTTEN SUMMER The dusty whisper of leaves lost In the dry lawn forgotten comer Roves in the rust behind my eyes With rowdy robin and raucous lover. The fragments of a broken summer Wink in the sun Among the heaped and scattered leaves. John Stuart Williams