Critical Analysis of ‘The Welsh Hill Country”

"The Welsh Hill Country” begins with a devastating picture of a landscape which was beautiful many years ago but which now has lost its lustre. The poetic speaker firstly describes the desolate moor and in the last stanza he introduces a farmer who in spite of finding this gloomy panorama is still farming the land. Therefore it seems that the central tension of the poem is the contradiction between the preconceived notion of the Welsh countryside and the reality of the landscape. The principal themes are the decay of natural beauty and the pessimism of being able to return to this idyllic era. The poem is divided into three main stanzas; each stanza discussing an important part of life in the …show more content…

Furthermore, much like the houses in the second stanza, the farmer is decaying in a natural, biological sense but also in a man made physical sense evident in the poetic speakers portrayal of his “ripped coat” (line 15). The pessimism of the poetic speaker as regards the notion of the Welsh Hills being able to return to the preconceived notion of a Wales that is healthy, green and alive is evident in the use of the word “dead” (line 18) representing the finality of the state of the Welsh countryside.
There is a structural parallelism between the first and the third stanza; this can be seen in the use of the disease metaphor, that is to say, the affect of the disease and how it is exhibited occur in the same order. Also the repetitive use of the disease metaphor and the use of assonance rhyme on the first and third line of each stanza represent the monotony of this existence on the Welsh Hills. In conclusion, the poetic speaker successfully portrays the extensive gap between the preconceived ideas of the Welsh countryside and the brutal reality of what is actually occurring there. The notion that the countryside is decaying and the pessimism associated with this is represented in each stanza with the disease eating away at the sheep, the houses falling into ruin and the man, also diseased, withering away.