ISLWYN.

William Thomas was born April 3, 1832, and very early showed signs of poetic talent. He published a volume of poems, ‘Caniadau Islwyn’ (Messrs. Hughes & Son, Wrexham), about 1867, some of the finest pieces in which, including “Thought” and “The Vision and Faculty Divine,” are extracted from a long poem “The Storm,” which has never yet been published. A complete edition of his works is now in the press. He died Nov. 20, 1878.

Night.

Come, Night, with all thy train Of witnesses. I love The stars’ deep eloquence, That with the morning hours Grows mute again. Thy stillness cries to human sense, “There is a God above, And worlds more fair than ours.” The day is night which hides the stars from sight! Our night for day is given To make more plain the path to heaven.

It is the Sun That at its rising makes the infidel, And all day long the world alone Its tale can tell. Oh welcome, Night, that bid’st the world be still, That through the stars eternity may speak. Too early, Dawn, too early dost thou wake: Too early climbest up the Eastern hill: Too early! stay: so quiet is the Night, And in her pensive breeze such sympathy, She shows us suns that suffer no eclipse, O’er which the grave’s dark shadow ne’er can lie. Nay! come not yet, O Dawn: thy laughing lips, Thy wanton glance, and frolic songs of glee, The convocation of those holier spheres profane, And when night vanishes, heaven is hid again.

Come, balmy Night! O peaceful hours, When on its axis sleeps the untiring wheel, And from this loud-voiced world of ours No taint of earth can on the breezes steal.

The weary sailor, when time’s tempests rage, Joys when he sees, on the far shores of heaven, The fiery line of stars, as beacons given To guide him to the eternal anchorage.

The Vision and the Faculty Divine.

When it will, it comes, Like the rain or the bow Or the nightingale’s lay By the lake below: As free from restraint as the seraph that roams O’er the ebbing waves of the dying day, When the reddening west, ’twixt the sun and the sea, Seems to open the door of eternity.

When it will, it comes, Like the stars that are driven O’er the cloudwrack riven. When it will—to the world it owes no debt, No times, no seasons for it are set. When it will—like all that belongs to heaven.

Not so the sea That hath its laws and rules and door: Whose ebb and whose flow In the ears of men beat evermore, Like time’s great pendulum to and fro. And the time of whose visits is known long before As it rolls to the moment from shore to shore.

Not so the sun, Time’s fountain and head, Whose shadows to hours and minutes creep, As into their fold the gathering sheep. The Alps, in their garb of eternal snow— So far from the world they grow white with dread— The moment know When from the East’s ever darkening sea He will rise—the image of Deity. And the birds, the same moment awaking, blow The world’s great trumpet that men may know That night hath fled, And day is risen again from the dead.

Like the rainbow it comes— As the sign of the covenant made long ago ’Twixt Godhood and thought, when, abating its flow, The sea of eternity brought into sight Time’s far distant mountains, and safe on their height There rested, by God to humanity brought, The Ark of eternal, immutable Thought!

Thought.

We are not certain that the mighty soul Doth err, when far above the narrow groove In which man walks from childhood to the grave It rises, murmuring things unutterable, And spurns as lies the outward forms of sense, And, like a shooting star, enfranchised seeks The spaces of eternity.

Hath not The soul a hidden story of its own, A tide of mysteries breaking on a far And distant shore, where memory was lost Amid the mighty ruins of a world Or worlds now vanished?

Are the stars o’erhead Things as divine and glorious as poesy Is wont to sing? Is’t not some power in us, Some memory of a yet diviner world And things illumined by the light of God That dowers the stars with beauty, gives them strength And grandeur? ’Tis in us the stars have being, And poesy’s self is but the memory Of things that have been or the seer’s glance At things that shall be—a future and a past Both greater than the present.

Who hath not Within him felt some long forgotten world Sweep through the corner of his former self, Or touch some jutting peak of memory? Or can we prove a poet’s imaginings Are not the remnants of a higher life, A thousand times more glorious, lying hid Within the deepest sea of his great soul, Till comes the all-searching breath of poesy To bid them rise? Oh hail, all hail the hour When God reveals Himself, and like the sun Illumines every epoch of our being, And through them all the Spirit’s path shines clear From God, through Nature, back to God again.

The Variety of Wales.

Oh where with such variety Her charms doth nature pour, Or beauties lavish as on thee, Thou world in miniature? Now stern and frowning she appears, Anon her smile most radiant wears.

Between the hills which upward soar Fair valleys lie afar, Where wakes no wind, no torrents roar Our perfect peace to mar, And many a mere to human eyes Reflects the Peace of Paradise.

As ramparts high thy mountains rise Against the wind and rain, To break the strength of wintry skies And rush of storms restrain. And safe beneath them smiling spreads The green expanse of fertile meads.

Though thou art little, dearest Wales, Though strait thy limits are, Upon thy mountains and thy vales Are beauties rich and rare: Thy bounds are narrowed, but to me Sufficient thy variety.

The Sick Minister.

Even now my brethren preach the word, While here I helpless lie; How the thought frets me like a cord— Their work and my infirmity.

Their every effort, Father, crown with power, And all their utterance with Thy unction dower. And unto me, here in my house, be given Patient submission to the will of Heaven.

Time was, I thought one Sabbath’s rest would be— One Sabbath’s rest with nought of toil to tire— Like some fair island in a stormtoss’d sea, Or pause in music of the eternal choir.

But it is with my heart on this fair morn, As with the reaper on a summer’s day, Who hears the sickle sweeping through the corn, And he for weakness needs at home must stay.

’Twixt us and men, us and the world’s wild din, The Sabbath is a day of rest; But betwixt us and God—because of sin— A day of labour to each earnest breast.

And think not, till thou lie beneath the sod, Preacher of Peace, there can be rest for thee, Time is the week-tide of the sons of God, Their Sabbath is—Eternity.

Life, like the Heavens.

Life, like the heavens, doth endless worlds contain; Each day’s a world where good or ill holds sway: For through life’s spacious vistas as we stray Hour after hour we sow with varying grain. Sown even to the wayside, down the plane Of Time thus passes every flying day— Never, till Time’s brief seasons fade away Into Eternity, to rise again. But ’neath the ripening rays of righteous fate, To blade and ear the seed grows silently, ’Gainst that great day whose reapers angels are: When all Time’s hours before the Throne laid bare, World heaped on world, shall for the sickle wait Of endless death—or immortality.

The Poets of Wales.

I.

Dear Cymru, mid thy mountains soaring high Dwells Genius, basking on thy quiet air, And heavenly shades, and solitude more rare, And all wrapt round with fullest harmony Of streams which fall afar. Thus pleasantly ’Neath Nature their fit foster mother’s care, Thy children learn from infant hours to bear And work the will of God. Thy scenery So varied-wild, so strangely sweet and strong, Works on them and to music moulds their mind, Till flows their fancy in poetic rills. The voice of Nature breathes in every song And we may read therein thy features kind As in some tarn that nestles ’neath thy hills.

II.

Thy fragrant breezes wander through the maze Of all their songs as through a woodland reach: Their odes drop sweetness like the ripening peach In laden orchards on late summer days. Their work is Nature’s own—not theirs the praise By culture won which midnight studies teach. Sounds the loud cataract in their sonorous speech, And strikes the keynote of their tuneful lays. As to remotest ages in the past We trace thy joyous story, more and more Bards won high honour mid thy hills and vales. So, Cymru, while this world of ours shall last, And Ocean echoing beat upon thy shore, May poets never cease to sing for Wales!

The Lighthouse.

When night first spread her curtain o’er the deep, Firm based beneath the waves the lighthouse tower Rose to the clouds, and mariners once more Blest the bright gleam that o’er them ward would keep. When rose the moon, the sea lay all asleep, It’s dreaming waves enfolded by the shore: And founded on the rock, of iron its door, The beacon flashed its light across the deep. Then rose the storm and lashed the waves until They roared like wounded lions, and there raved The elemental forces, shock on shock: And all the great sea’s batteries worked their will That never more should ship through it be saved. The rising sun looked out and saw—the Rock.