"The Heart That Is Low Now Will Be At The Full Tomorrow"

In his later years, R. S. Thomas lived in a stone cottage near the sea on the Lleyn Peninsula in Wales.  I recently came across a poem of his that I had completely forgotten.  It dates from his years on the Peninsula.  I was immediately reminded of Patrick Kavanagh's "My Room" (which I posted here last month), and, in particular, its final stanza:

My room is a musty attic,
But its little window
Lets in the stars.

Frederick William Hayes, "The Rivals from Llanddwyn" (c. 1884)

          At the End

Few possessions: a chair,

a table, a bed

to say my prayers by,

and, gathered from the shore,

the bone-like, crossed sticks

proving that nature

acknowledges the Crucifixion.

All night I am at 

a window not too small

to be frame to the stars

that are no further off

than the city lights

I have rejected.  By day

the passers-by, who are not

pilgrims, stare through the rain's

bars, seeing me as prisoner

of the one view, I who

have been made free

by the tide's pendulum truth

that the heart that is low now

will be at the full tomorrow.

R. S. Thomas, No Truce with the Furies (Bloodaxe Books 1995).

"A window not too small/to be frame to the stars" is what got me to thinking of Kavanagh's "its little window/Lets in the stars."  The poem also brings to mind James Reeves's "Animula":  ". . . An old soul/In a narrow cottage . . ."

Frederick William Hayes, "Llanddwyn" (c. 1884)

I recently suggested that, lest we lose sight of his poetry, we should be wary of the prevalent caricature of Thomas as a curmudgeon.  That being said, I concede that Thomas's disposition was not exactly, shall we say, a welcoming one.  He was by nature an anchorite who was a little grumpy. But, to his credit, he does not dissemble in his poetry:  harshness coexists with beauty.   Like life.

   
    The Small Window

In Wales there are jewels

To gather, but with the eye

Only.  A hill lights up

Suddenly; a field trembles

With colour and goes out

In its turn; in one day

You can witness the extent

Of the spectrum and grow rich

With looking.  Have a care;

This wealth is for the few

And chosen.  Those who crowd

A small window dirty it

With their breathing, though sublime

And inexhaustible the view.

R. S. Thomas, Not That He Brought Flowers (Rupert Hart-Davis 1968).

Frederick William Hayes, "Llanddwyn Abbey" (c. 1884)

The lines "A hill lights up/Suddenly; a field trembles/With colour and goes out/In its turn" bring to mind one of Thomas's finest poems -- a poem which has appeared here before, but which is always worth revisiting.

            The Bright Field

I have seen the sun break through

to illuminate a small field

for a while, and gone my way

and forgotten it.  But that was the pearl

of great price, the one field that had

the treasure in it.  I realize now

that I must give all that I have

to possess it.  Life is not hurrying

on to a receding future, nor hankering after

an imagined past.  It is the turning

aside like Moses to the miracle

of the lit bush, to a brightness

that seemed as transitory as your youth

once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

R. S. Thomas, Laboratories of the Spirit (Macmillan 1975).

Frederick William Hayes, "Clynnog Beach" (c. 1895)