| |
| I NEVER dreamed we’d meet that day | |
| In our old haunts down Fricourt way, | |
| Plotting such marvellous journeys there | |
| For jolly old “Après-la-guerre.” | |
| |
| Well, when it’s over, first we’ll meet | 5 |
| At Gweithdy Bach, my country seat | |
| In Wales, a curious little shop | |
| With two rooms and a roof on top, | |
| A sort of Morlancourt-ish billet | |
| That never needs a crowd to fill it. | 10 |
| But oh, the country round about! | |
| The sort of view that makes you shout | |
| For want of any better way | |
| Of praising God: there’s a blue bay | |
| Shining in front, and on the right | 15 |
| Snowden and Hebog capped with white, | |
| And lots of other jolly peaks | |
| That you could wonder at for weeks, | |
| With jag and spur and hump and cleft. | |
| There’s a grey castle on the left, | 20 |
| And back in the high Hinterland | |
| You’ll see the grave of Shawn Knarlbrand, | |
| Who slew the savage Buffaloon | |
| By the Nant-col one night in June, | |
| And won his surname from the horn | 25 |
| Of this prodigious unicorn. | |
| Beyond, where the two Rhinogs tower, | |
| Rhinog Fach and Rhinog Fawr, | |
| Close there after a four years’ chase | |
| From Thessaly and the woods of Thrace, | 30 |
| The beaten Dog-cat stood at bay | |
| And growled and fought and passed away. | |
| You’ll see where mountain conies grapple | |
| With prayer and creed in their rock chapel | |
| Which Ben and Claire once built for them; | 35 |
| They call it Söar Bethlehem. | |
| You’ll see where in old Roman days, | |
| Before Revivals changed our ways, | |
| The Virgin ’scaped the Devil’s grab, | |
| Printing her foot on a stone slab | 40 |
| With five clear toe-marks; and you’ll find | |
| The fiendish thumbprint close behind. | |
| You’ll see where Math, Mathonwy’s son, | |
| Spoke with the wizard Gwydion | |
| And bad him from South Wales set out | 45 |
| To steal that creature with the snout, | |
| That new-discovered grunting beast | |
| Divinely flavoured for the feast. | |
| No traveller yet has hit upon | |
| A wilder land than Meirion, | 50 |
| For desolate hills and tumbling stones, | |
| Bogland and melody and old bones. | |
| Fairies and ghosts are here galore, | |
| And poetry most splendid, more | |
| Than can be written with the pen | 55 |
| Or understood by common men. | |
| |
| In Gweithdy Bach we’ll rest awhile, | |
| We’ll dress our wounds and learn to smile | |
| With easier lips; we’ll stretch our legs, | |
| And live on bilberry tart and eggs, | 60 |
| And store up solar energy, | |
| Basking in sunshine by the sea, | |
| Until we feel a match once more | |
| For anything but another war. | |
| |
| So then we’ll kiss our families, | 65 |
| And sail across the seas | |
| (The God of Song protecting us) | |
| To the great hills of Caucasus. | |
| Robert will learn the local bat | |
| For billeting and things like that, | 70 |
| If Siegfried learns the piccolo | |
| To charm the people as we go. | |
| |
| The jolly peasants clad in furs | |
| Will greet the Welch-ski officers | |
| With open arms, and ere we pass | 75 |
| Will make us vocal with Kavasse. | |
| In old Bagdad we’ll call a halt | |
| At the Sâshuns’ ancestral vault; | |
| We’ll catch the Persian rose-flowers’ scent, | |
| And understand what Omar meant. | 80 |
| Bitlis and Mush will know our faces, | |
| Tiflis and Tomsk, and all such places. | |
| Perhaps eventually we’ll get | |
| Among the Tartars of Thibet. | |
| Hobnobbing with the Chungs and Mings, | 85 |
| And doing wild, tremendous things | |
| In free adventure, quest and fight, | |
| And God! what poetry we’ll write! | |
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