Nicolas Jacobs writes: Sam Adams suggests (‘Letter from Wales’, PNR 273) that Waldo Williams’s choice of the title Dail Pren (Leaves of the Tree) for the only collection of his poems published in his lifetime may have been in part inspired by the title of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. That can hardly be disproved, but a much more obvious source is surely Revelation 22:2, which reads in English, ‘In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations’ (a daily pren oedd I iacháu’r cenhedloedd). The text continues, ‘And there shall be no more curse’. This would fit perfectly with Waldo’s commitment to pacifism, which underpins so much of his best poetry.

Yours ever
Nicolas Jacobs