2020 • 3' • Children's Choir SA & Harp or Piano
Cân i Ystrad Fflur /A Song for Strata Florida was commissioned by The Strata Florida Trust for performance by local primary school children.
Cân i Ystrad Fflur /Song for Strata Florida is a setting of the beautiful short poem by T. Gwynn Jones. There are four stanzas in the poem in which the poet celebrates the enduring sense of the beauty of nature and of religious faith (see Supporting Information).
Ystrad Fflur
Mae dail y coed yn Ystrad Fflur
Yn murmur yn yr awel,
A deuddeng Abad yn y gro
Yn huno yna’n dawel.
Ac yno, dan yr ywen brudd
Mae Dafydd bêr ei gywydd
A llawer pennaeth llym ei gledd
Yn ango’r bedd tragywydd.
Er bod yr haf pan ddêl ei oed,
Yn deffro coed i ddeilio,
Ni ddeffry dyn, a gwaith ei llaw
Sy’n distaw ymddadfeilio.
Ond er mai angof angau prudd
Ar adfail ffydd a welaf,
Pan rodiwyf ddaear Ystrad Fflur
O’m dolur ymdawelaf.
Ystrad Fflur translated by Martin Locock
In Ystrad Fflur the leaves of trees
Are murmuring in the breeze
There twenty Abbots sleeping sound
Lie quietly in the ground
And there beneath the solemn yews
Sweet Dafydd found his muse
And many leaders bold and brave
The silence of the grave
Though summer on its brightest day
Wakes trees to leafy sway
A man, his work, his life, his all
Can pass beyond recall
Not here the absent void of death
And ruins of our faith
My sorrow quietens, then is gone
When Ystrad’s soil I stand on