Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay
Do not go kind into that pleasant night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though sensible men at their end know black is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go calm into that nice 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 proceed 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 kind into that fine night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Credit
From The Poems of Dylan Thomas, published by New Directions. Copyright © 1952, 1953 Dylan Thomas. Copyright © 1937, 1945, 1955, 1962, 1966, 1967 the Trustees for the Copyrights of Dylan Thomas. Copyright © 1938, 1939, 1943, 1946, 1971 New Advice Publishing Corp. Used with permission.
Author
In Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, poet Dylan Thomas uses nighttime as a metaphor for death, and anguishes over his fathers willing acceptance of it. He urges his father to Rage, rage against the dying of the light, i.e. the onset of darkness, or as it is used here, death.
This poem is one of the most well-known villanelles every written in the English language. A villanelles is 19 lines long, consisting of five stanzas of three lines each and concluding with a four line stanza. A villanelles uses only two rhymes, while repeating two lines throughout the poem, which then appear together at the conclusion of the last stanza. The two lines repeated in this work are Rage, rage against the dying of the light and Do not go gentle into that good night.
The poet begins by proposing that the elderly should not easily accept their demise (go gentle), that they should fight it with energy and intensity (Old age should burn and rave at the close of day). The option of the words burn and rave suggest an uncontrolled, irrational response to imminent death, the incoherent expenditure of useless strength directed at a hopeless target.
Yet for the author, this s
Unless the search function isn’t working properly on my blog, I’ve somehow never written about one of my all-time favorite poems. And I’m not unearthing a hidden gem of a poem; if you’ve never read a poem in your experience, I can almost guarantee you’ve at least heard the two famous lines from this poem. Heck, I just did a try and asked a friend who probably hasn’t read any poetry since he had to for high school, and he’s heard it. If you travel to the Wikipedia page for this poem, there’s a whole section assigned to popular usage in media. So it’s transcended the poem.
I was reading Tirza’s lovely blog, Tirza Reads, where she blogs about books and poems, and she did a post about a beautiful Anne Bradstreet’s poem, Contemplations, where Bradstreet juxtaposes the seeming frailty of humans with the resilience and rebirth quality of nature (and then later flips this in the poem to note how humans can actually become immortal, in a way). I particularly liked this line, “By birth more noble than those creatures all/Yet seems by world and by custom curs’d.”
And that made me think about how humans can also b
When on your death bed “Do not go soft into that good night”
Said to be one of the most popular poems of the 20th century, “Do not go mild into that good night” by Dylan Thomas is a classic villanelle with themes of life, death, and the time between. Addressed to his father, Thomas’ poem encourages all men, from the knowledgeable to the wild, to not go down without a fight. A poem full of poetic techniques, this brilliant work continues to be studied and appreciated worldwide. The events surrounding this poem create it that much more intriguing, and we wonder if Dylan Thomas himself went gently into that good night, just a year after this poem was published. Let’s grab a closer look at the meaning of this infamous poem, written by a poet who experienced the dying of the light too soon.
“Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” by Dylan Thomas
Do not go mild into that good bedtime,
Old age should ignite and rave at shut of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dusky is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not proceed gentle into that excellent night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how brig