Dylan Thomas was a Welsh writer whose reputation as one of the most popular modern poets survives to this day. His work is noted for its relatability as well as its original use of language. Read more about Dylan Thomas.
Some of Thomas’ most famous poems include Do not go gentle into that good night, Fern Hill, And Death Shall Have No Dominion, and Poem in October.
‘Do not go gentle into that good night’ is a powerful poem about how important it is, despite death’s inevitability, to fight against it until the bitter end.
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.
‘And Death Shall Have No Dominion’ is about the power that death does not have over mankind and how men are unified after death, not divided.
And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
‘A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London’ by Dylan Thomas tells of a speaker’s inability to comprehend great losses.
Never until the mankind making
Bird beast and flower
Fathering and all humbling darkness
Tells with silence the last light breaking
‘The Hands that Signed the Paper’ is a war protest poem that derides the appalling apathy and ruthlessness of the rulers toward ordinary citizens.
The hand that signed the paper felled a city;
Five sovereign fingers taxed the breath,
Doubled the globe of dead and halved a country;
These five kings did a king to death.
You who bow down at cross and altar,
Remember me and pity Him
Who took my flesh and bone for armour
And doublecrossed my mother's womb.
My tears are like the quiet drift
Of petals from some magic rose;
And all my grief flows from the rift
Of unremembered skies and snows.
Dylan Thomas wrote his famous poem ‘Fern Hill’ as a way of looking back towards childhood and appreciating the pure joy that becomes so hard to find after.
Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
‘In My Craft Or Sullen Art’ by Dylan Thomas describes Thomas’ writing practice, ideal reader and preferred legacy after his death.
In my craft or sullen art
Exercised in the still night
When only the moon rages
And the lovers lie abed
Light breaks where no sun shines;
Where no sea runs, the waters of the heart
Push in their tides;
And, broken ghosts with glow-worms in their heads,
‘Poem in October’ tells of a speaker’s journey out of autumn and up a hill to reclaim childhood joy, the summer season and his spirituality.
Though the town below lay leaved with October blood.
O may my heart's truth
Still be sung
On this high hill in a year's turning.
The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
The hunchback in the park
A solitary mister
Propped between trees and water
From the opening of the garden lock
‘When All My Five and Country Senses See’ describes the necessity of paying attention to one’s senses for love to function.
My one and noble heart has witnesses
In all love's countries, that will grope awake;
And when blind sleep drops on the spying senses,
The heart is sensual, though five eyes break.
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