This year we are celebrating the 100th anniversary of the birth of Dylan Thomas on Oct 27th 1914. Apart from Fern Hill, a Child’s Christmas in Wales, and Under Milk Wood, his most famous work is probably a poem that is often read at funerals:
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rage 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 the 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.
Much as I have for many years been moved by that poem, especially in the recording made by the poet, I have sometimes wondered how it sits alongside the Christian faith. The accepted Christian view of death might seem to be that we should meet it with acceptance and tranquility, thinking more about the life to come than the life that is past. Yet Dylan Thomas’s poem seems to encourage something very different. It was written at the time of his father’s death – so there may be personal elements in the poem of which we are unaware. Nevertheless there is something there which we can all respond to, something which the poet is saying as much to himself as to his father.
The poet voices the regret of wise men whose words have not lit up the world; their belief that death is final makes them all the more determined that there should be still a power in words – poetic words – which can make a lasting difference – though lightning is perhaps a more temporary image. Good men with perhaps the same view of death regret that their deeds have seemed only frail – lacking the greenness of what grows and bears fruit. And then the wild men – wild like Thomas himself – realise in the face of death that they have celebrated the wrong thing – things that were passing rather than permanent, however brightly they shine in the poet’s words. And finally grave men who like his father are loosing the sight of their eyes, yet even so realise that even the blind eye can blaze with the gaiety of an internal vision, though that vision is passing like a meteor shower or the earlier forked lightning. At the end the poet turns to his father and seems to acknowledge that he, the poet, has been guilty of these things and that he needs his father’s grief, passion, forgiveness or even cursing to set him on the right path.
In its way the poem may be saying what this funeral service says at the end, though perhaps less dramatically – ‘Give us the wisdom and grace to use aright the time that is left to us here on earth.’ Help us to remember that we all face death and that we should seek to do something with our lives that keeps the light burning fiercely until it dies. The rage the poet speaks of is not a resentful anger but a rage on behalf of the gift of life. The use of this poem in a funeral is not directed so much I suspect at the person who is already dead but at the mourners themselves.
And yet there are more complexities to this poem which may or may not be attributed to the poet who has been much criticised for his verbal extravagance, for his love of the rhythm and sound of words rather than the meanings they reveal. Larkin described Thomas as sticking ‘words into us like pins’ in a way no other modern poet could do and yet he also claimed that Thomas ‘doesn’t use his words to any advantage.’
Although Thomas seems to see death as an end he addresses it as a ‘good night’ the kind of night which we might go into gently. It as though that possibility remains open if the lesson is learnt in time so that the rage may become redundant. It is not death itself that he rages against but the loss of a light in which something may be put right, the poet’s true vocation revealed, together with the proper power of words and deeds and celebration.
What Thomas leaves out both of the poem and perhaps also of his own life is the search for personal understanding, the opening up of the self to God, the Father ‘on the sad height’. He has been criticised for the frequent self centredness of his poetry, his lack of interest in or compassion for the depths of other people’s lives. And perhaps that relates in some way to a lack or proper self awareness in himself. Whatever the case we might conclude with our opening question, how does this poem sit alongside the Christian faith? If the poem represents a rage for life rather than the rage of a resentful anger then we might also consider that those moments when Jesus rages against his opponents in the gospel he is doing the same thing – he rages against the way in which the Pharisees and their scribes circumscribe people’s lives with rules which do not reflect the inclusiveness, mercy, and nurturing love of the kingdom. He too rages on behalf of the light.
And yet as we enter the Kingdom season – the month before Advent in which we remember the saints, those whom we have known and loved who have died and those who have died in war, and this year more especially the victims of the First World War – we also recognise that the passion which inspired Thomas is only justified, only fulfilled, only derived from the life which God gives us and which he does not finally take away. However painful and tragic the loss of someone we have loved – it may be that this faith can give us the courage to wish them a gentle good night until the dawning of that everlasting day which is the light of the kingdom in all its glory.
With my love and prayers,
The Vicar writes
Stephen Tucker