TO MY MOTHER.
Edmund O. (Edmund Osborne) Jones translation
They flout me as half-English—a disgrace For which scarce all your virtues can atone, Mother, in whom I find no flaw but one, That you are Saxon!—but this fault of race Fell not on me nor yet, I fear, your grace Of English speech, else had more smoothly run These echoes of Welsh Lyrics, and your son Need not have flinched before the critic’s face. Such as they are, from your far Yorkshire home Perchance they may in fancy bid you come, Pondering past memories, to my native land, Once more to see fair Mawddach from the bridge, To mark how Cader rises, ridge on ridge, Or, where Llanaber guards our dead, to stand.
July, 1896.