From a scornful perspective of Progress,

On the sad face of Toil

There’s a place between moor and mountain

Without a stain or scar.

But where the ploughing has touched the land

It rips the spring from the soil. 

Away from the tired struggling

And the bitterness, there is to find,

A new world, with the taste of prehistory

Waiting for tasting, like old wine.

Old, old is the murmur of glades and glens,

And in the space near a river, at Rhos Lan.

Yet more accomplishment is seen

In the still of Lon Coed,

The pleated cathedral arch of trees

And green freshness beneath my tread.

It makes no link to church or town

But that’s no concern of mine.

Oh, how hard to reach within

The calmness of this place

From my industrial valley of despair

And I grasp the world’s intent.  

I reach my own understanding of ‘to be’

And my soul walks with me at peace, agree. 

​

R Williams Parry