Wave Poem

"The Wave" is a poem expressing Gruffudd's homesickness as, on board a ship in a Spanish harbour, he awaits favourable weather for his return journey. It is also a cywydd llatai, a love poem in which a non-human messenger is sent to the beloved, in this case one of the massive North Atlantic billows for which the Bay of Biscay is known. It involves a lengthy passage of dyfalu, description by the use of many far-fetched and imaginative metaphors and images, which might be seen as the main purpose of the poem; the poet expresses both admiration and fear of the wave, turning in the dialogue section into comic deference when he realizes that it has come from his lady. But "The Wave" is also a…