But Tim, it strikes us right in the soul. How can windbaggery do that?

I see, I guess. My "mistake" is to take the advice at face value, rather than as a crie de coeur of a son whose "advice" is not being offered by DT as a universal blueprint for how to approach one's own death. I'm not convinced, but I see the point and don't entirely reject it. It just seems to me to be reading more into the poem than is warranted, perhaps, based on the text alone.

I've always loved the poem for its sounds and craft and windbaggery...but I can't say it's ever struck my soul. It's a song I love for the music, not the meaning. It's a fine and wonderful poem, but it doesn't hold a candle to "Fern Hill," which stands among the truly great poems of all time, on a shelf right beside Wordsworth's mortality ode.

Roger,
I have a pact with myself to never use the word "soul". I just broke it because I didn't find "mind" an adequate substitute.

I have always taken the larger meaning from the poem and never thought that the intense personal pain of Thomas was more than a starting point for a howl of resentment against the dirty trick of mortality. Perhaps only those who grew up outside orgamised religion can remember the sense of outrage when they fully absorbed the inescapability of the indignity of death. The waste of accumulated knowledge. The blankness of it. For me, that is what the poem is about.

Those who have been trained into another posture will not share that response.
Janet

" ...crying how bright
their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay"

Think of wavetops on choppy water, & how sunlight reflects from them--the light really dances. And think of the 7th wave or 9th wave, or whatever it is (I think it was Tennyson wrote a poem calling Milton the 7th wave of his [Milton's] age), you know, the wave that is supposed always to be the largest in a series.

I suppose it is significant Thomas chose a bay because the water is habitually choppier in bays or lakes than in seas or oceans.

Hopkins uses a similar image somewhere. Also, Hopkins'

"gash gold vermilion"

[the sparks coming up from a wood fire] bears some similarity.

What is really quite interesting to me, is, the light on the waves is necessarily a reflected light. Odd image for an atheist.

Matthew,
Above all it was because he came from Swansea which nestles above a green bay. It was part of his unconscious and therefore a natural image for him to choose.

Here are some pix. I have seen it look green. Not in these photos alas. Swansea used to be nicer. It's been tarted up.

Swansea maritime area

Janet

[This message has been edited by Janet Kenny (edited October 09, 2005).]

You know, I knew he lived near a body of water, but couldn't remember which body it was or what type it was. Thanks for the link! Too bad it's not what it used to be.

"Part of his unconscious," yes, but it was not an unconscious employment of the image, however "natural... to choose," it may have been.

I mentioned Tennyson's "7th wave" (or "9th Wave" -- I still can't remember the title) because both he and Dylan Thomas are speaking of human achievement (albeit in radically different images) in terms of the movement of a natural body of water. I.E.-There are dips or troughs in the wave (which=poor-quality poets or underachieving human beings in general) versus crests or bright spots at the top of waves (which=great poets or overachieving human beings). Again, there are people (or poets) who stand out, and there are people (or poets) who don't.

In life, one should rather wish to be the Promethean, raging against the dying of the light, than the shadow in the shallows, hoping to slip by with little noise and no suffering. Or so Thomas seems to say.

That's a trite way of explicating a much deeper metaphor (forgive the pun), but I explain it so, for clarity's sake.

That's how I've always interpreted Thomas' poem in the past. I could be wrong.

EDIT: The "frail deeds," BTW, I see as rather depressing, despite the dancing bright waves.

'Fact is, I was also thinking of Walt Whitman when I posted. I was thinking of the sounds of sea & waves in Whitman's poetry. "Dover Beach" comes to mind as well. But neither any of Whitman's poems (that I can think of), nor "Dover Beach," bear any strong thematic similarity to Thomas' poem.

[This message has been edited by Matthew T. Barber (edited October 14, 2005).]

It is a cry of frustration and grief that might have come from a child, someone who is not reconciled to mortality. What Thomas really wants his father to do is keep living, and since that is impossible the son blames his father for accepting death, as though he could make it go away if he really wanted to. I never thought it a realistic or mature point of view and the advice is less than useful, but the grief and rage are real.

I see old age and degenerative illness as nature's way of making death easier; it would be too hard to let go when we are young and fully engaged with life. But let go we will, sooner or later, ready or not.

I hope to go more gently than I came.

Carol