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In Country Sleep, and Other Poems
34 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1952
2 people are currently reading
309 people want to read
About the author
Dylan Thomas
597 books1,415 followersDylan Marlais Thomas (1914-1953) was a Welsh poet who wrote in English. Many regard him as one of the 20th century's most influential poets.
In addition to poetry, Thomas wrote short stories and scripts for film and radio, with the latter frequently performed by Thomas himself. His public readings, particularly in America, won him great acclaim; his booming, at times, ostentatious voice, with a subtle Welsh lilt, became almost as famous as his works. His best-known work includes the "play for voices" Under Milk Wood and the celebrated villanelle for his dying father, "Do not go gentle into that good night." Appreciative critics have also noted the superb craftsmanship and compression of poems such as "In my craft or sullen art" and the rhapsodic lyricism of Fern Hill.
In addition to poetry, Thomas wrote short stories and scripts for film and radio, with the latter frequently performed by Thomas himself. His public readings, particularly in America, won him great acclaim; his booming, at times, ostentatious voice, with a subtle Welsh lilt, became almost as famous as his works. His best-known work includes the "play for voices" Under Milk Wood and the celebrated villanelle for his dying father, "Do not go gentle into that good night." Appreciative critics have also noted the superb craftsmanship and compression of poems such as "In my craft or sullen art" and the rhapsodic lyricism of Fern Hill.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
July 16, 2022
This was Dylan’s very last volume of poems, published in 1952, a year before his decease. The poems composed between 1947 and 51 show him at his best. Most of the poems in this volume were written in Italy, in a cabin outside Florence.
Dylan’s purpose in the poems was comprehensible to him. All his life, religion had troubled him and the world had astonished him. He could not flee God because of the loveliness of His works. As Dylan wrote of the poems in 1951, they were “poems in admire of God’s world by a man who doesn’t believe in God.”
There again, that declaration was not quite true.
Dylan was reluctant to believe in God, but his very thoughts and words and rhythms were immersed with biblical themes and heavenly reverences, for a natural god or God in nature. If Dylan referred in the poem, to the Bible as tales and parables, yet he praised “The saga from morning to seraphim leaping”---
Bell believe or fear that the rustic shade or spell
Shall harrow and snow the blood while you ride wide and near,
For who unmanningly haunts the mountain ravened eaves
Or skulks in the dell moon but moonshine echoing clear
From the starred well?
A hill touches an angel. Out of a saint's cell
The nightbird lauds through nunneries and domes of leaves
Her robin breasted tree, three Marys in the rays.
_Sanctum sanctorum_ the animal eye of the wood
In the rain telling its beads, and the gravest ghost
The owl at its knelling. Fox and holt kneel before blood.
Now the tales praise
The star rise at pasture and nightlong the fables graze
On the lord's-table of the bowing grass. Fear most
For ever of all not the wolf in his baaing hood
Nor the tusked prince, in the ruttish farm, at the rind
And mire of love, but the Thief as meek as the dew.
The country is holy: O bide in that country kind,
Know the green good,
Under the prayer wheeling moon in the rosy wood
Be shielded by chant and flower and gay may you
He worshipped legend and God in ‘His legends, Celtic and Christian’.
He was the successor and fatality to the Welsh sense of music and beauty and sin.
‘Over Sir John’s Hill’ cannot be written by a nonbeliever, but by a man gradually won over to what Dylan called in his radio talk on these last poems, “the godhead, the author, the milky-way farmer, the first cause, architect, lamp-lighter, quintessence the beginning Word”. The poem shows how, by celestial compassion, the dead earth rises to exult.
The ancient myth of the divine destroyer and rescuer is sung again. “The lyrics of this volume are vans to the natural universe and there, maker.”
The finest poem in this volume certainly is ‘Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.’
The poem is a villanelle. Thomas was a cognizant craftsman who employed words, assonances and cadences with a masterly dexterity. Vilanelle had been used as a form in France and Italy. It typically articulated idyllic sentiments.
The poem has a message from the poet who emphasises our need to make our lives count against foreseeable death. It states the theme in an ironic language. You must live your life when you are dying. Life must be lived intensely, and the desire to live should remain intact even in face of death. The poet speaks to his father and tries to encourage him with the hope of life, and wants him to show his will, rage and passion to resist death as long as it is possible.
The poet uses fewer words to express his meaning. It is a short poem that says too much. The effect is achieved through the use of words carefully stressed through repetition. The lines 'do not go gentle' and 'rage, rage against the dying of the light' are repeated throughout the poem at the end of every stanza. These are two refrains which the reader cannot forget. The lines echo in the ears and their meaning lingers in memory.
The poet makes uses of symbols to avoid the monotony of using the word death. He employs a metaphor comparing death to the darkness of nightfall. Good night implies farewell. The words are used as a pun suggesting double meaning. It can be a temporary good-bye or a final farewell to life, which is irreversible. Death is referred to metaphorically in phrases like 'close of day' and 'dying of light'. The imagery of the poem creates an impact on the mind of the reader.
Sadness and joy, grief and celebration are two important emotions expressed in poetry, particularly in lyrical poetry. This poem has a sad tone. The poet is talking to his dying father. He seems to lament the inevitability of death while exhorting his father to fight against the invincible. There is something pathetic about what the poet wishes to achieve when the shadow of inexorable death has fallen on his father. He wants his father to live and not die. This is what a son is expected to hope and wish.
Dylan’s purpose in the poems was comprehensible to him. All his life, religion had troubled him and the world had astonished him. He could not flee God because of the loveliness of His works. As Dylan wrote of the poems in 1951, they were “poems in admire of God’s world by a man who doesn’t believe in God.”
There again, that declaration was not quite true.
Dylan was reluctant to believe in God, but his very thoughts and words and rhythms were immersed with biblical themes and heavenly reverences, for a natural god or God in nature. If Dylan referred in the poem, to the Bible as tales and parables, yet he praised “The saga from morning to seraphim leaping”---
Bell believe or fear that the rustic shade or spell
Shall harrow and snow the blood while you ride wide and near,
For who unmanningly haunts the mountain ravened eaves
Or skulks in the dell moon but moonshine echoing clear
From the starred well?
A hill touches an angel. Out of a saint's cell
The nightbird lauds through nunneries and domes of leaves
Her robin breasted tree, three Marys in the rays.
_Sanctum sanctorum_ the animal eye of the wood
In the rain telling its beads, and the gravest ghost
The owl at its knelling. Fox and holt kneel before blood.
Now the tales praise
The star rise at pasture and nightlong the fables graze
On the lord's-table of the bowing grass. Fear most
For ever of all not the wolf in his baaing hood
Nor the tusked prince, in the ruttish farm, at the rind
And mire of love, but the Thief as meek as the dew.
The country is holy: O bide in that country kind,
Know the green good,
Under the prayer wheeling moon in the rosy wood
Be shielded by chant and flower and gay may you
He worshipped legend and God in ‘His legends, Celtic and Christian’.
He was the successor and fatality to the Welsh sense of music and beauty and sin.
‘Over Sir John’s Hill’ cannot be written by a nonbeliever, but by a man gradually won over to what Dylan called in his radio talk on these last poems, “the godhead, the author, the milky-way farmer, the first cause, architect, lamp-lighter, quintessence the beginning Word”. The poem shows how, by celestial compassion, the dead earth rises to exult.
The ancient myth of the divine destroyer and rescuer is sung again. “The lyrics of this volume are vans to the natural universe and there, maker.”
The finest poem in this volume certainly is ‘Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.’
The poem is a villanelle. Thomas was a cognizant craftsman who employed words, assonances and cadences with a masterly dexterity. Vilanelle had been used as a form in France and Italy. It typically articulated idyllic sentiments.
The poem has a message from the poet who emphasises our need to make our lives count against foreseeable death. It states the theme in an ironic language. You must live your life when you are dying. Life must be lived intensely, and the desire to live should remain intact even in face of death. The poet speaks to his father and tries to encourage him with the hope of life, and wants him to show his will, rage and passion to resist death as long as it is possible.
The poet uses fewer words to express his meaning. It is a short poem that says too much. The effect is achieved through the use of words carefully stressed through repetition. The lines 'do not go gentle' and 'rage, rage against the dying of the light' are repeated throughout the poem at the end of every stanza. These are two refrains which the reader cannot forget. The lines echo in the ears and their meaning lingers in memory.
The poet makes uses of symbols to avoid the monotony of using the word death. He employs a metaphor comparing death to the darkness of nightfall. Good night implies farewell. The words are used as a pun suggesting double meaning. It can be a temporary good-bye or a final farewell to life, which is irreversible. Death is referred to metaphorically in phrases like 'close of day' and 'dying of light'. The imagery of the poem creates an impact on the mind of the reader.
Sadness and joy, grief and celebration are two important emotions expressed in poetry, particularly in lyrical poetry. This poem has a sad tone. The poet is talking to his dying father. He seems to lament the inevitability of death while exhorting his father to fight against the invincible. There is something pathetic about what the poet wishes to achieve when the shadow of inexorable death has fallen on his father. He wants his father to live and not die. This is what a son is expected to hope and wish.
Want to read
October 17, 2015"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 that 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."
Image: Jaeyeol Han, 'Passersby, Precipitous', 2013
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 that 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."
Image: Jaeyeol Han, 'Passersby, Precipitous', 2013
May 25, 2020
Just 6 poams, but they are good. Highlights ~ "In Country Sleep" "Do not go gentle into that good night" and "Lament".
July 11, 2022
7,5/10
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews