Thick Snow

A thick cloak as high as the houses in the glen, an aerial tallow freezing the valley, a crop of frost up the Berwyn, a covering like white salt.

Huw Morus 1622 - 1709

The Snowfall

White flour, earth-flesh, a cold fleece on the mountain, small snow of the chill black day; snow like a platter, bitter cold plumage, a softness sent to entrammel me.

White snow on the cold hill above has blinded me and soaked my clothes. By the blessed God! I had no hope I should ever get to my house.

Gwerfyl Mechain, 15th century

Autumn

The whole land, every dale and glen, weeps its long sorrow after the graceful summer; no tree top can do more, nor weep leaves after that.

Thomas Nicholson, 19th century.

Old Age Comes Not Alone

'Old age comes not along' - it comes with sighs and lamentation, and with long waking now, and with a long sleep after.

John Morris Jones 1864 - 1929

For a Grave at Trawsfynydd

I'm helpless now, and if they call me home I cannot answer; for the black old bare dank earth of Trawsfynydd covers my face.

David Jones of Llangwyfen, 18th century

Dinas Bran

Englyn and harp and harp-string and the lordly feasts, all these have passed away; and where the nobility of Gwynedd used to be the birds of night now reign.

Taliesin o Eifion 1820 - 76

The Court of Ifor Hael

The court of Ifor Hael, how mean the sight, where it lies in ruins among the alders! The thorns and blighted thistles own it all, and brambles now, where was magnificence.

There are no poets there, nor bards, nor cheerful banquet-tables, nor gold, among its walls; nor largesse and the generous lord to give it.

For Dafydd, that skilled singer, what cold grief to lay Ifor in the clay! The pathways where once song was heard are the haunts of the owl.

For all their glory, short is the fame of lords, both their grandeur and their ramparts pass away; it is a strange place for pride to make its home - in the dust!

Evan Evans, 1731 - 88