Welsh Landscape by R. S. Thomas was published in 1955.

This poem is about the live of being Welsh and because you are Welsh, how you live. The first line of this poem says that To live in Wales is to be conscious. To do this you have to be awake and aware of your surroundings. In this poem we see that the author is telling us that there is no present or future, only the past. By saying this he is saying that due to the structures and type of government that they had in Wales in the late 1950s nothing has changed and it appears that they are stuck in the past. Starting in 1951 and going through 1964 the Welsh population was ruled by a conservative government that began with the rule of Winston Churchill from 1951-1955 (Educational, 2012) Lets take a closer look at this brilliant poets work who was nominated for a Nobel prize in Literature. An ordained priest from 1936 to 1978 this gave Thomas a unique perspective on the people their farm lifestyle and the conditions of the North Wales communities where he grew up. He says that you cannot live in the present, at least not in Wales, there is the language for instance. (Thomas, 2005) This line is a personal line for the author because he did not grow up and learn to speak the Welsh language good enough to be able to write his poetry in his native tongue. Although his poetic style was compared to the terrain of Wales, rugged he was recognized as one of the leading poets in modern Wales. (Thomas, 2005) As a modern day poet in a remote part of the Welsh community he was able to bring light and life to a part of the world that few will ever see, hear or read about. The man was a visionary and had a brilliant mind. In his poem he talks about the hum of the machinery and the noisy tractor, he does this to show that the people have become so obsessed with working the land for all that it has to offer that they are missing its true beauty. Thomas being a man of the cloth can see the pain that the landscape around him is feeling because at one time it was beautiful and now the people are so focused on other things that no one has even taken the arrows out of the trees in an effort to clean up the forest.

References
Educational, S. (2012, 01 14). Spartacus Eduacational. Retrieved from Spartacus School net: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/PRchurchill.htm Foundation, P. (2012, 01 14). Poetry Foundation. Retrieved from Poetry Foundation.org: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/r-s-thomas Thomas, R. (2005). Welsh Landscape. In M. Ferguson, Norton Anthology of Poetry (p. 1544). New York: W.W. Norton & Company.