In my craft or sullen art Exercised in the still night When only the moon rages And
the lovers lie abed With all their griefs in their arms I labour by singing light Not for ambition or bread Or
the strut and trade of charms On the ivory stages But for the common wages Of their most secret heart.
Not
for the proud man apart From the raging moon I write On these spindrift pages Nor for the towering dead With their
nightingales and psalms But for the lovers, their arms Round the griefs of the ages, Who pay no praise or wages Nor
heed my craft or art
And Death Shall Have
No Dominion
And death shall have no dominion. Dead
mean naked they shall be one With the man in the wind and the west moon; When their bones are picked clean and the clean
bones gone, They shall have stars at elbow and foot; Though they go mad they shall be sane, Though they sink through
the sea they shall rise again; Though lovers be lost love shall not; And death shall have no dominion.
And death
shall have no dominion. Under the windings of the sea They lying long shall not die windily; Twisting on racks when
sinews give way, Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break; Faith in their hands shall snap in two, And the unicorn
evils run them through; Split all ends up they shan't crack; And death shall have no dominion.
And death shall
have no dominion. No more may gulls cry at their ears Or waves break loud on the seashores; Where blew a flower may
a flower no more Lift its head to the blows of the rain; Though they be mad and dead as nails, Heads of the characters
hammer through daisies; Break in the sun till the sun breaks down, And death shall have no dominion.
In my Craft or Sullen Art Dylan Thomas is letting us in on who he is writting his poetry to. Within
this poem he uses many personifications such as the towering dead or the raging moon. In adding these personifications he
is providing us emotions that we would not nessisarly feel if this poem lacked them.
With this peom he clearly is saying that he is not writing peotry for the pompus or the those who have already passed
away. Dylan instead says that he is writting for the sake of the lovers, who even though they regect his craft, still need
a voice.
Death Shall have No Domain is one of Dylans many poems that link humans to the after world. Dylan was a king of
personification in which he would create pictures in our heads that in many cases we would never see otherwise. In this poem
Dylan is personifying wind as a man as well as human elbows and knees as stars.
This poem gives us an insight at what Dylan thought. It explains how after we die and out bodys of this world are gone
that we truly become free and are able to fly with the wind and live among the stars. It also talks about how thinking of
death makes us mad but after death (when death no longer has power) we are truly sain.
John Spencer
A record of his struggle from darkness to some measure of light
