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a6b7e3a
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You must learn to tell worry from thought, and thought from prayer. Sometimes a light will go from your life, Huw, and your life becomes a prayer, till you are strong enough to stand under the weight of your own thought again.
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Richard Llewellyn |
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579241c
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I liked to put my hands on work that had been blessed by good minds and the passing of time.
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Richard Llewellyn |
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502626c
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I thought when I was a young man that I would conquer the world with truth. I thought I would lead an army greater than Alexander ever dreamed of, not to conquer nations, but to liberate mankind. With truth. With the golden sound of the Word. But only a few heard the trumpet. Only a few understood. The rest of them put on black and sat in Chapel.
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Richard Llewellyn |
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12cdce7
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Why do you go to Chapel, Huw?" he asked me, still going on with his work. "Because," I said, and then I stopped. Why, indeed? "Yes," he said, and smiling. "Because you want to? Because you like coming? Because your mother and father come? Because your friends are there? Because it is proper to do on Sunday? Because there is nothing else to do? Because you like the singing? To hear me preach? Or because you would fear a visitation of fire ..
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Richard Llewellyn |
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da5a0cd
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How quiet is the house when the mistress has gone. You walk in, and the same smell is a comfort to you, the air on your cheek has the same feel, the fire makes the same noise, the china plates on the dresser shelves laugh at you as they always did, and the clock is still as loud as he always was with his heels on the road of Time. But a warmness is missing, a briskness, that moved as soon as the latch was lifted, and those sounds that fol..
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Richard Llewellyn |
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5311934
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So I often saw my father writing under the lamp, scratching his head to find something to write about, even telling her that the handle had come off the kettle, and about Gareth cutting a lump out of the door with my chisel, with pages about Taliesin, of course. There is strange to see a man quiet in his own world, and searching it for jewels to give his queen.
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Richard Llewellyn |
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76dfbb8
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There is no room for pride in any man. There is no room for unkindness. There is not room for wit at the expense of others. All men are born the same, and equal. As you saw today, so come Captains and the Kings and the Tinkers and the Tailors. Let the memory direct your dealings with men and women.
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Richard Llewellyn |
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f6354b2
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English grammar and composition is difficult even for the English, but worse and worse for a Welsh boy. He speaks, reads, writes, and he thinks in Welsh, at home, in the street, and in Chapel, and when he reads English he will understand it in Welsh, and when he speaks English, he will pronounce the words with pain and using crutches. So stupid are the English, who build schools for the Welsh, and insist, on pain of punishment, that English..
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Richard Llewellyn |
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25fc83b
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She is a slut," I said, "because she went up on the mountain with a man, instead of to bed with her husband. Is it, Dada?" My father was quiet for a little, with his back to me, looking down into the Valley. "Yes," my father said. "That is why she is a slut." "Then what is Chris Phillips, then?" I asked. "He did very wrong," said my father, but there was no body in his voice. "Mr. Gruffydd will have a word with him." "But not in front of ..
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Richard Llewellyn |
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2a1e8ab
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I had slept nothing all night, making ghosts for myself, filling my mind with them and giving myself pale frights. All the ghosts had a different punishment for me, some of them shocking indeed.
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Richard Llewellyn |
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ab4ff9f
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O, the love of woman is a glorious thing, and strange in its ways of work.
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Richard Llewellyn |
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92608a3
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It hurt to think that a boy would not have him at his value of himself.
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education
meekness
humility
sincerity
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Richard Llewellyn |
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ad490fb
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That is the trouble...You are a crowd of bits of boys all in the thing for what you will get. Demands, you call them. Well, I am against demands of any kind. You cannot reason with demand, and where there is no reason, there is no sense. As for your support, whatever you call it, some long word, what is the use of it?
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reason
demanding-more
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Richard Llewellyn |
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25f90eb
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Well," my father said to her, and looked at her. "Well," my mother said to him, and looked at him. In that quietness they were speaking their own language, with their eyes, with the way they stood, with what they put into the air about them, each knowing what the other was saying, and having strength one from the other, for they had been learning through forty years of being together, and their minds were one."
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Richard Llewellyn |
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a2bd3c6
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Then sense. Use your sense. Not all of us are born for greatness, but all of us have sense. Make use of it. Think. Think long and well.
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philosophical
thought-provoking
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Richard Llewellyn |
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4ab194a
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This watch my father gave me when I entered the Ministry. I would like to give you more. Take it, Huw. It has marked time that I loved." Warm from his pocket in my hand, the smoothness of gold and glass. "No need for us to shake hands," he said, and his voice riding winds and seas, and his back black in front of me. "We will live in the minds of each other, Huw, my little one. Good-bye, with love."
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Richard Llewellyn |
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3b3409b
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F]or three-quarters of an hour we sat in silence, and the voice of Mr. Gruffydd, wherever he was, filled us again with courage, and with hope of a better world. And his watch was in my hand, warm as when he gave it to me. "Are you with us here this morning, Mr. Gruffydd?" my father said, with my mother's hand in his. "Lifting up our eyes to the hills, we are, see. As you said, so we do. Forever. God bless you. Yes. And, O God, give ease t..
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Richard Llewellyn |
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557b62c
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But even of him I can think of with sorrow, now at this moment. Those times, those people...have gone. How can there be fury felt for things that are gone to dust.
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sorrow
fury
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Richard Llewellyn |
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63e9bd8
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The world was created for Mankind, not for some of mankind.
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equality
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Richard Llewellyn |
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9e7c56c
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I also have a world, is it? And I will have whoever I say to share it. Ivor it was, first, because I said Ivor and nobody else. You, it would have been second, if I had said yes. But neither of you if I had said no." So Bronwen showed me more of the strength of woman, which is stronger than fists and muscles and male shoutings. For now, instead of thinking about her as guardian of a world denied to me, and foreign to me because it belonged..
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Richard Llewellyn |
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8d7df6b
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So I kissed her, and went out, and up on top of the mountain to have peace, for I had a grudge that was savage with heat against everybody, and only up on top there, where it was green, and high, and blue, and quiet, with only the winds to come at you, was a place of rest, where the unkindness of man for man could be forgotten, and I could wait for God to send calm and wisdom, and O, a blessed ease.
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Richard Llewellyn |
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2fa9a4d
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I saw what he was afraid of doing and I had sympathy, for however hard we fought, we must be beaten by empty bellies. The rights of man are poor things beside the eyes of hungry children. Their hurts are keener than the soreness of injustice.
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Richard Llewellyn |
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4b82c4a
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The preacher gave a fine sermon. He used some big English words I had never heard before because our meetings were taken by the grown-ups in our language. But I remember the tunes of some of them and asked my father afterwards. I suppose I must have got the tunes wrong because although my father tried and said them over again, we never found out what they were and I am still in ignorance to this day.
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Richard Llewellyn |
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9a20e01
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As Davy said, so it happened. The ironworkers started to work in the pit for not much more than some of the boys. Some of them even started pulling the trams in place of the ponies. A lot of the older and better-paid men got discharged without being told why, although it was put out that they were too old and could not work as well as they ought. But that was nonsense, because Dai Griffiths, one of them, was one of the best in the Valley an..
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Richard Llewellyn |
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414edad
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But the truth is I found out about Davy in the usual way a small boy finds out things he is denied to know by older people, and that is through other small boys.
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Richard Llewellyn |
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4a2cfe8
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Is that all, sir?" I asked him, and worried, with no happiness. "Is that all?" he said, and held up his hands. "What more, then?" "Well, sir," I said, "I thought it was something more. Something terrible." "It is terrible, Huw," said Mr. Gruffydd, and in quiet, with his hand on my head. "It is indeed terrible. Think, you. To have the responsibility of a life within you. Many lives. Think of the miseries and afflictions that can come to thos..
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Richard Llewellyn |
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be4fdfe
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I wonder is happiness only an essence of good living, that you shall taste only once or twice while you live, and then go on living with the taste in your mouth, and wishing you had the fullness of it solid between your teeth, like a good meal that you have tasted and cherished, and look back in your mind to eat again.
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Richard Llewellyn |
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a09572c
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Hear you, then, the voice of your brothers and sisters, deep as the seas, as timeless, as restless, and as fierce. Tenors spear the clouds with blades that had their keenness from the silversmiths of heaven. Baritones pour gold, and royal contralto mounts to reach the lowest note of garlanded soprano. And under all, basso profundo bends his mighty back to carry all wherever melody shall take them. Sing then, Son of Man, and know that in you..
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Richard Llewellyn |
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4e4bbba
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Sing, then. Sing, indeed, with shoulders back, and head up so that song might go to the roof and beyond to the sky. Mass on mass of tone, with a hard edge, and rich with quality, every single note a carpet of colour woven from basso profundo, and basso, and baritone, and alto, and tenor, and soprano, and alto and mezzo, and contralto, singing and singing, until life and all things living are become a song. O, Voice of Man, organ of most lov..
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Richard Llewellyn |
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47a0a57
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Ivor raised his finger, and from top of the Hill down to bottom men and women hummed softly to have the proper key, with sopranos going up to find the octave, and altos climbing, and tenors making silver and contraltos and baritones resting in comfort and basso down on the octave below, and the sound they all made was a life-time of loveliness, so solid, so warm, so deep, and yet so delicate. It will be no surprise to me if the flowers of t..
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Richard Llewellyn |
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c8c3fcc
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The kitchen went so quiet that I could hear the grease dropping from the chickens on the spit. Not a sound else was to be heard except the littler sounds of the new paint finding homes in the cracks, and the table getting comfortable on the new tiles, and the chair resting itself, and my breath coming slow and steady and making
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Richard Llewellyn |
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df4b9dc
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Bron went to the door and leaned against the jamb, with a hand flat upon the wall inside. "O, Mama, my little one," she said, in a voice that should have been eased with many tears, "I am lonely without him. I put his boots and clothes ready every night. But they are there, still, in the morning. O, Mama, there is lonely I am."
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Richard Llewellyn |
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3f0b3f1
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I went to bed, full, happy, and caring nothing for all the hurt of all the Englished Welshmen that ever festered upon a proud land.
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Richard Llewellyn |
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3a1615e
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All the way over the mountain, slag heaps were like the backs of buried animals rising as from the Pit. Living trees were buried in them, and in some, gorse was growing with its lamps alight, and grass was trying to be green wherever the wind would let it rest in peace. "Will there be any of the Valley left free of slag?" I said to my father."
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Richard Llewellyn |