The People and Landscape of the Welsh Hillcountry
R.S. Thomas writes about the people and landscape of the Welsh
“hillcountry.” By referring closely to at least two of his poems, show
how he makes the Welsh countryside and its inhabitants vivid to the
reader.
RS Thomas was born in Cardiff in 1913. He was a Parish Priest in
Wales for more than 20 years. During this time he taught himself the
Welsh language in order to understand the remote hill farmers that are
under his care.
He writes almost exclusively about the people and landscape of the
Welsh hill country. The poems that he writes are lacking in mental
emotion but they never lack tender or compassion for the massively
hardworking farmers he knows so well. The landscape that Thomas
describes so well reflects the grimness of the men’s lives.
The people’s lives are never sweetened nor romanticized and the poet
has no illusions on its harshness. Yet he has a deep understanding for
the hill country and its workers. This shows that R.S Thomas can
relate to the Welsh hill country very well.
The first poem that I am writing about is called “The Hill Farmer
Speaks”. This poem talks about the life of a farmer who has been
greatly affected by his work. The first verse of this poem talks
about a man who has no love and no friends. This we learn is because
of the land as it says, “I am the farmer stripped of love and thought
and grace by the lands hardness.” This shows the hard work that the
man has done over the years has taken from him his love, thought and
grace it is also a metaphor making this vivid for the reader. But he
wants us to know that he is still a human by saying, “Listen, listen,
I am a man like you.” Alliteration is used here (listen, listen), to
cause the affect that the man really is talking to you. The same
affect is caused when he says, “But what I am saying.” It shows you
that the mans surroundings are very empty and hostile by it saying,
“Desolate areas rough with dew.” This is also a metaphor showing its
vividness to the reader.
The second verse of this poem tells us of the wind going over the hill
pastures, hill pastures being a feature of any hill farm. After this
he says, “Year after year,” making this process seem constant. In the
next three lines there seems to be a link between the ewes and the
farmer, where it says, “The ewes starve, milkless, for want of the new
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