Dylan Thomas
A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London
Home
Getting Down with Dylan
The Times of Thomas
Dylan vs Dylan
Ears in the Turrets Hear
Talk About Thomas
A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London
Light breaks where no sun shines
My Hero Bares His Nerves
The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
What Made Him Known
Bibliography
Hunchback
Do Not Go Gentle
Other Famous Works and Readings

Johns favorite poem of Dylan Thomas

Never until the mankind making
Bird beast and flower
Fathering and all humbling darkness
Tells with silence the last light breaking
And the still hour
Is come of the sea tumbling in harness

And I must enter again the round
Zion of the water bead
And the synagogue of the ear of corn
Shall I let pray the shadow of a sound
Or sow my salt seed
In the least valley of sackcloth to mourn

The majesty and burning of the child's death.
I shall not murder
The mankind of her going with a grave truth
Nor blaspheme down the stations of the breath
With any further
Elegy of innocence and youth.

Deep with the first dead lies London's daughter,
Robed in the long friends,
The grains beyond age, the dark veins of her mother,
Secret by the unmourning water
Of the riding Thames.
After the first death, there is no other.

This poem is by far my favorite of Dylan Thomas’s. This is because of the way Dylan was able to use some different techniques within this poem to get his point across. The first of these is that he was able to, within the stanzas, put rhyming to use. The first and fourth, second and fifth, and third and sixth lines all rhyme with the clever use of assonance. This is not enough for Dylan though; being that he was obsessed with the sounds he could create with words he also used alliteration. This added a catchy rhythm to go along with the already rhyming poem. One thing that I have found with Dylan's poems is to understand them you have to read them out loud to get the effect of it rolling off of your tongue. This allows you to hear the imagery rather then just read a word and take is as literal which is an easy thing to fall into if you don't voice these poems. 

This poem talks about the after world as Dylan Thomas often does. This poem brings around a mysterious tone that give you chills while you slowly tumble over the lines. The imagery that is portrayed is not one that is pleasant and talks of children dying and allows your imagination to enter into the world of Dylan Thomas's after life as can be taken from the last line in which Dylan says after the first death their is no more. I feel as though this poem was based off the fact that he was driven from London during the German (Nazi) bombings During world war II. Being that his lived in England for many years he must have had some elegance to it which would account for the line deep with the first dead lies London’s daughter. This poem I feel puts Dylan Thomas’s glass half empty point of view to good use. It gives us a clear; hard to deal with image that goes right along with the saying war is hell. It is because of this strong image as well as the significant meaning behind the poem that I find it as my favorite poem.

 

A record of his struggle from darkness to some measure of light