Mrs Calloway’s Reviews > [(The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas)] [ By (author) Dylan Thomas, Edited by John Goodby ] [October, 2014] > Status Update

Pity Electra loveless, she whose grief
Drowns and is drowned, who utters to the stars
Her syllables, and to the gods her love;
Pity the poor unpitied who are strange with tears.

Pity the poor unpitied who are strange with tears.

Pity the living who are lost, alone;

There are no seacaves deeper than her eyes;
Day treads the trees and she the cavernous night.

The living sun laments the dying skies,
Lamenting falls.

All things are known: the stars’ advice
Calls some content to travel with the winds,
Though what the stars ask as they round
Time upon time the towers of the skies
Is heard but little till the stars go out.
I hear content, and ‘Be content’
Ring like a handbell through the corridors,
And ‘Know no answer’, and I know
No answer to the children’s cry

And green, sneers not at the old sky.
No man believes who does not wonder why.

For he has found his soul in loneliness,
Now he is one with many, one with all,
Fire and Jordan and the sad canal.
Now he has heard and read the happy word.
Still, in his hut, he broods among his birds.

The moon peers down the valley like a saint.

The hermit’s huts, and talked to ancient men.
Out of the noise into quiet I ran.