Do not go gentle into that good night - Dylan Thomas

[conuly]

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

https://poets.org/poem/do-not-go-gentle-good-night

I'm not entirely sure my mother is a fan of Dylan Thomas and, indeed, after checking his dates I'm not so sure I'm a fan of him either. These certainly are some strong opinions from somebody who died before his 40th birthday! Drinking yourself to death doesn't count as raging against the dying of the light either.

But I did quote him when talking about my mother, so.

Comments

[lilysea]

When I was at high school, my English Literature teacher told us that Dylan Thomas wrote it about the death of his father.

[fox]

It is about his father. The last stanza says so. Thomas himself didn't take that "rage, rage" advice, however. :-/

[greenwoodside]

My best wishes to you in a difficult time.

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

No one does nostalgic yearning quite like Dylan. I live in a city where he's very hard to get away from, a shadow on every street corner. One of the bars down the Friday night party street has 'Though lovers be lost love shall not' on a huge canvas sign across its first storey next to a photo of him in his young and pretty days.

It's a bit of a myth that he drank himself to death, though the drinking certainly didn't help. In fact, it was pneumonia that killed him.

[flemmings]

No one does nostalgic yearning quite like Dylan

I'd forgotten that we studied this poem in high school. And yes, it hit me in all the nostalgic feels even though, at 16, I had virtually nothing to be nostalgic about.

[sabotabby]

It's funny how it can evoke that, though. I'd barely lost anyone at 16 but I felt it, and it was rehearsal for later when I did actually lose people.

[flemmings]

I think it was more 'That is the land of lost content': hearkening back to a happier more golden age, like when I was 15. -_-

[gwydion]

My late father loved that one, and it lways makes me think of him.

[smokingboot]

It's a great poem.

Feeling for you X

[shadowkat]

It's odd, I didn't get the poem until now. It's about grief. Grieving a parent's death or a loved one. And the anger he felt when his father died. He even states it in the last verse.