'Gathered in from far and wide, and chronicling sixty years of austere devotion to language, these poems remind us that brevity was for R.S. Thomas ever the soul of passion, and unnerving honesty his guarantor of truth. Bitter elegies for the botched land of Wales and baffled encounters with the incorrigibly human here keep company with ... Read morejeremiads for his civilisation and the sound of one hand clapping for his God. But, most touchingly for this laureate of loneliness, there are also occasional gentle, shy poems of love, even in old age: Come to me a moment, stand,/ Ageing yet lovely still,/ At my side...' - Professor M. Wynn Thomas. 'Like Yeats, Thomas has produced his most powerful work in his old age - reminds me of Beethoven's last quartets in its fearless exploration of the mysteries of life and death - He is the first great poet since the Metaphysicals of the 17th century to draw his images from the science of his day' - Denis Healey. 'Reading R.S. Thomas's poems has become like reading the prophet Jeremiah - we find the same tenacity of theme and purpose; the ability to look without blinking into the misuse of the raw material of humanity' - David Scott. Show Less