Welsh playwright, poet and writer Dylan Marlais Thomas was born today on October 27th, 1914, in the Uplands suburb of Swansea, to David John (‘DJ’) Thomas, Senior English master at Swansea
Grammar School, and his wife Florence Hannah Thomas (née Williams) a
seamstress, the second of two children and younger brother to Nancy
Marles Thomas, nine years his senior.
Dylan’s middle name, Marlais ( pronounced ‘Mar-lice’) was chosen in
honour of his great-uncle, the Unitarian Minister and poet William
Thomas, better know by his pseudonym or ‘bardic name’ Gwilym Marles. A
combination of the words ‘mawr’ meaning big and either ‘clais’ or ‘glas’
meaning ditch, stream or blue, the name is distinctly Welsh in origin.
While the name Dylan is also a strong Welsh name pronounced “Dullan”,
interestingly, Dylan himself preferred to use the English pronunciation
“Dillan” and during radio broadcasts was often know to correct
announcers using the Welsh pronunciation.
Indeed, whilst Thomas is arguably the most well known Welsh poet of
all time, paradoxically his literary work is written entirely in
English. DJ and Florence were both fluent Welsh speakers (and DJ even
provided extracurricular Welsh lessons from their home) but following
the tradition of the time, Nancy and Dylan were not brought up to be
bilingual.It
was this decline of the Welsh Language during the nineteenth century
that subsequently gave rise to the ‘Anglo-Welsh literature’ or as many
English speaking Welsh men and women preferred, ‘Welsh writing in
English’.
There was an even greater upsurge in Welsh literature written in the
English language during the Great Depression of the 1930s. In the UK,
heavy industry was one of the worst hit areas, and the experiences of
those dependent on the Welsh coalfields inspired a plethora of writing
from the many writers belonging to this Anglo-Welsh school, who were
routed deeply in the working class families of South Wales and wished to
share their experiences with the world outside Wales. In contrast
though, Thomas hailed from a fairly middle-class background and had
grown up with more rural experiences. He often holidayed in
Carmarthenshire, and his home in Uplands was, and still is, one of the
more affluent areas of the city.
A blazing literary talent,
who by the age of eight or nine was writing his own poetry,
even before he entered the Grammar School in 1925. A quiet and
introspective
student, he was a frequent contributor to the school's magazine.Many of Dylan’s poems drew from his childhood experiences of the rural
Welsh countryside and he began writing of them in his notebooks at the
age of 15 whilst attending Swansea Grammar School. Indeed his first and
second collections of poems, entitled ’18 poems’ and ’25 poems’
respectively, drew heavily from these notebooks.
Leaving
school at sixteen he worked on the staff of the
South Wales Daily Post (later the South Wales Evening Post),
sometimes writing scathing reviews and critiques of local plays, concerts and
writers which needed be edited to keep from offending the subjects under scrutiny.
During this very productive writing period of Dylan's life, he also became known
locally for the offbeat jokes, stories and obscene limericks he told in the pubs
at night. He would read poems he was working on aloud to friends and relatives,
not wanting them to read the work he'd done, but instead to hear it. Along with
writing, Thomas was also involved with local theater, both writing and acting.
A good half of his 90 collected poems were written or half-written in
his bedroom at 5 Cwmdonkin Drive, Swansea before he was 20.
Following a short-lived position as a junior reporter at the South Wales
Daily Post at the age of 16, Dylan left the newspaper to concentrate on
his poetry, working as a freelance journalist when the need arose.
Having joined the Swansea Little Theatre Company, of which his sister
Nancy was also a member, Dylan began to frequent the pubs and café scene
in Swansea with his artistic contemporaries. As a group they became
known as the The Kardomah Gang, in honour of one of their favourite
local haunt, the Kardomah Café. The café was originally located in
Swansea’s Castle Street, coincidentally on the site of the former
Congregational Chapel where Dylan’s parents were married in 1903.
In a January 1933 essay in the South Wales Evening Post entitled
"Genius and Madness Akin in the World of Art" Thomas discussed the idea that
one gifted with genius often walked a line where it was "difficult to
differentiate, with any sureness, between insanity and eccentricity."
He asserted that "the borderline of insanity is more difficult to trace
than the majority of people, comparatively safe within the barriers of
their own common-sensibility, can realise."
Dylan's first national publication was in a small literary review in the
spring of 1933. Later that year his poems were published in the more
prestigious Adelphi and the London newspaper The Sunday Referee.After
moving to London in 1934 in pursuit of better opportunities,
Dylan's writing career began to flourish. His poems, essays, articles
and reviews were being published in London and Swansea magazines and
newspapers. With dedication and devotion to the craft of writing his
hard work paid of when his first book,18 poems was released on the 18th
of December 1934 when he was only 20. A second book Twenty-five poems
appeared in Autumn of 1936.He would go on to become one of the greatest
poets of the twentieth century.
It was in this year that Dylan would meet one Caitlin Macnamara, and it
is said that within hours of their first meeting Dylan, drunkenly
insisted that she was the most beautiful woman he had ever met and that
he was going to marry her, to which she offered no objections.
The slightly older Caitlin,who was a physically strong, trained dancer
with a fiery and
unpredictable temper found the impoverished poet vulnerable and sweet,
if a bit needy.
They spent the next five days and nights together, going from pub to pub
and hardly eating
at all. Later that summer when he and Caitlin met again in Wales, Dylan
had a run-in with
Augustus John, a painter and friend of her parents with whom Caitlin had
been having an affair.
Caitlin and Dylan eventually started living together near the end of
1936. and was to marry her in 1937. A turbulent marriage, that
weathered many a storm.
In 1941 , Thomas and Caitlin moved to Plas Gelli at Talsarn in what was
then known as Cardiganshire, now known as Ceredigion, keeping a studio
flat in London whilst spending some of the time working on wartime
propaganda films. The couple left their son Llewellyn with Caitlin's
mother, where he stayed until 1949. Their second child a daughter named
Aeronwy (Aeron) Bryn Thomas was born in March 1942. During his time in
London Thomas would take part in more than a hundred radio
programmes.Dylan and Caitlin moved to New Quay in September,eager to
escape both the war and London, moving to a little bungalow by the name
of ' Majoda' before moving to South Leigh in Oxfordshire. Their final home
would be the Boathouse in Laugharne, Carmarthebshire where they lived from 1949 to 1953.
The couple’s tumultuous relationship is well documented, not least in
Caitlin’s own memoirs of their married life, entitled ‘Leftover Life to
Kill’ and ‘Double Drink Story‘
(published posthumously), which describe the couple’s fiery
partnership, exacerbated by mutual infidelities and a fondness for
alcohol. Dylan himself referred to their union as “raw, red bleeding
meat”. However, the couple remained together until Dylan’s death in
1953. And whilst Caitlin eventually remarried and relocated to Italy,
following her own death in 1994 she was buried with Dylan in Laugharne.
Much of Dylan’s popularity both at home and abroad stemmed from his
descriptive lyrical prose and his ability to depict a Wales few Welsh
people in the industrial age ever got to see. Nevertheless, he portrayed
an image of ‘Welshness’ that was held dear to the hearts of many Welsh
men and women. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Dylan’s poetry did not
focus on the bleak images of the industrial depression. Where he does
refer to industrial terminology, such as in the poem’ All All And All’,
he combines it with the beauty of nature.
All All And All
All all and all the dry worlds lever,
Stage of the ice, the solid ocean,
All from the oil, the pound of lava.
City of spring, the governed flower,
Turns in the earth that turns the ashen
Towns around on a wheel of fire.
How now my flesh, my naked fellow,
Dug of the sea, the glanded morrow,
Worm in the scalp, the staked and fallow.
All all and all, the corpse's lover,
Skinny as sin, the foaming marrow,
All of the flesh, the dry worlds lever.
Stage of the ice, the solid ocean,
All from the oil, the pound of lava.
City of spring, the governed flower,
Turns in the earth that turns the ashen
Towns around on a wheel of fire.
How now my flesh, my naked fellow,
Dug of the sea, the glanded morrow,
Worm in the scalp, the staked and fallow.
All all and all, the corpse's lover,
Skinny as sin, the foaming marrow,
All of the flesh, the dry worlds lever.
II
Fear not the waking world, my mortal,
Fear not the flat, synthetic blood,
Nor the heart in the ribbing metal.
Fear not the tread, the seeded milling,
The trigger and scythe, the bridal blade,
Nor the flint in the lover's mauling.
Man of my flesh, the jawbone riven,
Know now the flesh's lock and vice,
And the cage for the scythe-eyed raver.
Know, O my bone, the jointed lever,
Fear not the screws that turn the voice,
And the face to the driven lover.
III
All all and all the dry worlds couple,
Ghost with her ghost, contagious man
With the womb of his shapeless people.
All that shapes from the caul and suckle,
Stroke of mechanical flesh on mine,
Square in these worlds the mortal circle.
Flower, flower the people's fusion,
O light in zenith, the coupled bud,
And the flame in the flesh's vision.
Out of the sea, the drive of oil,
Socket and grave, the brassy blood,
Flower, flower, all all and all.
Fear not the waking world, my mortal,
Fear not the flat, synthetic blood,
Nor the heart in the ribbing metal.
Fear not the tread, the seeded milling,
The trigger and scythe, the bridal blade,
Nor the flint in the lover's mauling.
Man of my flesh, the jawbone riven,
Know now the flesh's lock and vice,
And the cage for the scythe-eyed raver.
Know, O my bone, the jointed lever,
Fear not the screws that turn the voice,
And the face to the driven lover.
III
All all and all the dry worlds couple,
Ghost with her ghost, contagious man
With the womb of his shapeless people.
All that shapes from the caul and suckle,
Stroke of mechanical flesh on mine,
Square in these worlds the mortal circle.
Flower, flower the people's fusion,
O light in zenith, the coupled bud,
And the flame in the flesh's vision.
Out of the sea, the drive of oil,
Socket and grave, the brassy blood,
Flower, flower, all all and all.
Though Thomas was known to denounce Welsh nationalism (especially of the
politicised variety), elements of Wales and its literary heritage do
seep into his work, and it could be argued that if anything then, Thomas’ work is emblematic of
the way in which Welsh identity itself is multifarious, and difficult to
define and authenticate.
Through the character Rev Eli Jenkins in one of his best-known works,
the ‘play for voices’ Under Milk Wood (which was later made famous by
another equally iconic Welshman, Richard Burton) Dylan taps into that
collective ‘Welshness’ to which many are so fiercely loyal:
“I know
there are Towns lovelier than ours, And fairer hills and loftier far…But
let me choose and oh! I should Love all my life and longer To stroll
among our trees and stray In Goosegog Lane, on Donkey Down, And hear the
Dewi sing all day, And never, never leave the town.”
In this celebrated work, which follows
the lives of those who occupy the fictional Welsh village of Llareggub,
Thomas explores the mundane through his playful language and poetic
script. At one particular moment, Thomas the rascal surfaces to describe
the anguish of the solipsist Reverend Eli Jenkins over the death of his
Father - a one-legged, alcoholic farmer: 'Poor Dad,' grieves the
Reverend Eli, 'to die of drink and agriculture.' On the following page,
the profound Thomas makes an appearance, as Reverent Eli recites some of
his poetry:
'We are not wholly bad or good,
Who live our lives under Milk Wood,
And thou, I know, wilt be the first,
To see our best side, not our worst.'
The ever-charming Under Milk Wood
has the wonderful capacity to present the mundane in a paradoxically
poignant yet light-hearted manner. This work allows the reader to laugh
on one page and marvel in admiration on the next. Perhaps something
similar could have been said about Thomas himself.
Dylan Thomas is not usually thought about as a particular political
writer. For those who know his life and his work, clearly Dylan was left
wing, and had various Communist and Marxist friends.Thomas was influenced, especially from 1933 onwards, by an older Marxist
friend Bert Trick.Thomas himself was probably too unconventional and
too free-spirited to conform to any particular party line.
Politics was not at
the forefront of his aesthetic style though, unlike some other writers
and artists of the 1930s, but nevertheless, Dylan was clearly someone affected by the politics of his age. He wrote about the
great issues of his day, such as unemployment, war and the danger of
atomic weapons. and was also a life-long socialist and an internationalist, in his 1934 collection New Verse he states “I take my stand with any revolutionary body that
asserts it to be the right of all men to share, equally and
impartially, every production of man ... from the sources of
production at man’s disposal”
The backdrop to Thomas’ tragically short
life are some of the most pivotal events of the last century, including
the Great Depression, the rise of fascism,WW2 and the coming of the cold
war. There are clear references to these developments in a number of
his poems and letters. As an exceptionally sensitive and reflective
individual, Thomas could not fail to assimilate these momentous
developments into his writings. The dominant image of his poetry as
primarily bucolic, nostalgic and apolitical belies the undercurrent of
radicalism and hatred of oppression that runs through a great deal of
his output.
All the evidence points to Thomas’s holding revolutionary
convictions both before he moved from Wales to London in 1934 and
throughout his life. Before the Second World War, Dylan was certainly a man who liked to be
known as challenging fascists on his patch, in Swansea. Writing in the Swansea Guardian,
he was critical of a local counciller Mainwaring Hughes, who aligned
himself with the British Union of Fascists. When the BUF mounted a 3,000
strong demonstration in Swansea in 1934, Dylan felt the need to be
involved to oppose such extremism. A letter he wrote to Pamela Hansford
Johnson in July 1934 explained how he had recently written ‘a seditious
article attacking the shirted gentleman’ – i.e. Oswald Mosely. Here, he
even claimed to have been involved at a fracas when opposing fascists,
resulting in him being thrown down some stairs. It seems the latter was
something of an embellishment , but nonetheless such letters highlight
his anti-fascist identity.
From discussing the annihilation of the ruling classes with his
communist friend Bert Trick, through his work for the Ministry of
Information in World War Two advocating and explaining the future
welfare state; and from his lectures, free of charge to the USA’s Communist
Party in his last days, Dylan always did what he thought was his bit to
further the cause.
In 1944, Thomas also wanted the
Communist Party cultural journal Our Time to publish Ceremony
after a Fire Raid, ‘pressing’ the poem “upon Arnold
Rattenbury because, he said, he wanted to advertise that he remained
"a socialist”
Ceremony After a Fire Road
I
Myselves
The grievers
Grieve
Among the street burned to tireless death
A child of a few hours
With its kneading mouth
Charred on the black breast of the grave
The mother dug, and its arms full of fires.
Begin
With singing
Sing
Darkness kindled back into beginning
When the caught tongue nodded blind,
A star was broken
Into the centuries of the child
Myselves grieve now, and miracles cannot atone.
Forgive
Us forgive
Us your death that myselves the believers
May hold it in a great flood
Till the blood shall spurt,
And the dust shall sing like a bird
As the grains blow, as your death grows, through our heart.
Crying
Your dying
Cry,
Child beyond cockcrow, by the fire-dwarfed
Street we chant the flying sea
In the body bereft.
Love is the last light spoken. Oh
Seed of sons in the loin of the black husk left.
II
I know not whether
Adam or Eve, the adorned holy bullock
Or the white ewe lamb
Or the chosen virgin
Laid in her snow
On the altar of London,
Was the first to die
In the cinder of the little skull,
O bride and bride groom
O Adam and Eve together
Lying in the lull
Under the sad breast of the head stone
White as the skeleton
Of the garden of Eden.
I know the legend
Of Adam and Eve is never for a second
Silent in my service
Over the dead infants
Over the one
Child who was priest and servants,
Word, singers, and tongue
In the cinder of the little skull,
Who was the serpent's
Night fall and the fruit like a sun,
Man and woman undone,
Beginning crumbled back to darkness
Bare as nurseries
Of the garden of wilderness.
III
Into the organpipes and steeples
Of the luminous cathedrals,
Into the weathercocks' molten mouths
Rippling in twelve-winded circles,
Into the dead clock burning the hour
Over the urn of sabbaths
Over the whirling ditch of daybreak
Over the sun's hovel and the slum of fire
And the golden pavements laid in requiems,
Into the bread in a wheatfield of flames,
Into the wine burning like brandy,
The masses of the sea
The masses of the sea under
The masses of the infant-bearing sea
Erupt, fountain, and enter to utter for ever
Glory glory glory
The sundering ultimate kingdom of genesis' thunder.
Myselves
The grievers
Grieve
Among the street burned to tireless death
A child of a few hours
With its kneading mouth
Charred on the black breast of the grave
The mother dug, and its arms full of fires.
Begin
With singing
Sing
Darkness kindled back into beginning
When the caught tongue nodded blind,
A star was broken
Into the centuries of the child
Myselves grieve now, and miracles cannot atone.
Forgive
Us forgive
Us your death that myselves the believers
May hold it in a great flood
Till the blood shall spurt,
And the dust shall sing like a bird
As the grains blow, as your death grows, through our heart.
Crying
Your dying
Cry,
Child beyond cockcrow, by the fire-dwarfed
Street we chant the flying sea
In the body bereft.
Love is the last light spoken. Oh
Seed of sons in the loin of the black husk left.
II
I know not whether
Adam or Eve, the adorned holy bullock
Or the white ewe lamb
Or the chosen virgin
Laid in her snow
On the altar of London,
Was the first to die
In the cinder of the little skull,
O bride and bride groom
O Adam and Eve together
Lying in the lull
Under the sad breast of the head stone
White as the skeleton
Of the garden of Eden.
I know the legend
Of Adam and Eve is never for a second
Silent in my service
Over the dead infants
Over the one
Child who was priest and servants,
Word, singers, and tongue
In the cinder of the little skull,
Who was the serpent's
Night fall and the fruit like a sun,
Man and woman undone,
Beginning crumbled back to darkness
Bare as nurseries
Of the garden of wilderness.
III
Into the organpipes and steeples
Of the luminous cathedrals,
Into the weathercocks' molten mouths
Rippling in twelve-winded circles,
Into the dead clock burning the hour
Over the urn of sabbaths
Over the whirling ditch of daybreak
Over the sun's hovel and the slum of fire
And the golden pavements laid in requiems,
Into the bread in a wheatfield of flames,
Into the wine burning like brandy,
The masses of the sea
The masses of the sea under
The masses of the infant-bearing sea
Erupt, fountain, and enter to utter for ever
Glory glory glory
The sundering ultimate kingdom of genesis' thunder.
Thomas contributed not only to
Our Time but to its successor Communist Party periodicals
Arena and Circus. On his 1952 visit to America, he also
agreed to do a poetry reading for the Socialist Party of the USA
without expecting his usual fee. And, as we have seen, Thomas called
himself a communist and relished opportunities for political
discussion in the final days in New York city. And, as his prose
writings and film scripts reveal, he understood poverty and class
consciousness and could describe them as experienced in Wales and the
world. Dylan developed more anti-fascist writing during the Second World
War,
as he worked as a writer of propaganda films. In this body of work too –
which was of greater significance and impact, but once more was not his
most literary writing – he could use humour to skewer a fascist leader.
His funniest of these films was undoubtedly These Are the Men,
which
featured footage of Hitler and other leading Nazis delivering histrionic
speeches, although re-dubbed with an English language voice over. The
film-scripts reveal a socialist understanding of the cost to
humanity of a failed economic system. Wales – Green Mountain, Black
Mountain was too political for the British Council to show overseas.
One memorable passage answers the early critics who said that Thomas
ignored the social reality of Depression-era Wales:
Remember the procession of the old-young men
From dole queue to corner and back again,
From the pinched, packed streets to the peak of slag
In the bite of the winters with shovel and bag,
With a drooping fag and a turned up collar,
Stamping for the cold at the ill lit corner
Dragging through the squalor with their hearts like lead
Staring at the hunger and the shut pit-head
Nothing in their pockets, nothing home to eat,
Lagging from the slag heap to the pinched, packed street.
Remember the procession of the old-young men.
It shall never happen again.
Remember the procession of the old-young men
From dole queue to corner and back again,
From the pinched, packed streets to the peak of slag
In the bite of the winters with shovel and bag,
With a drooping fag and a turned up collar,
Stamping for the cold at the ill lit corner
Dragging through the squalor with their hearts like lead
Staring at the hunger and the shut pit-head
Nothing in their pockets, nothing home to eat,
Lagging from the slag heap to the pinched, packed street.
Remember the procession of the old-young men.
It shall never happen again.
His socialism can be seen in the two
screenplays he wrote after the Second World War. He based The
Doctor and The Devils on the true story of the body-snatchers Burke and
Hare, using it to show there is one law for the rich and another for the
poor. And in Rebecca’s Daughters he told the story of the Welsh toll
gate riots of 1843, making the point that “governments only bring in
reforms when they are afraid of a revolution”. Sadly, both scripts
remained unperformed during his lifetime.
Even as late as the 1950's Thomas was still "very much on the Left." In
1949 he attended an international writers' Peace Congress in Prague.
Then in 1952, when he was on tour in America, he did a poetry reading
for the Socialist Party of the USA. He declined to accept his usual fee
and did it instead free of charge.
Sadly a lot of this is not as widely known as it should be. partly due to Dylan himself. He would often like to boast about his drinking and said: “An alcoholic
is someone
you don’t like, who drinks as much as you do.” Thomas’ health rapidly
began to deteriorate as a result of his drinking; he was warned by his
doctor to give up alcohol but he carried on regardless.In January 1950
Dylan engaged on a reading tour in America which was a great success.
However on a further tour in 1953, he collapsed in the Chelsea Hotel
after a long drinking bout at the White Horse Tavern the result of a
binge in which, as he allegedly boasted, he drank "18 straight whiskies;
I think it's a record" .this has since become the stuff of legends, but since
then it has been said that he probably actually died from a blood sugar
inbalance having not eaten properly for several days prior to his
death, and the Doctor who treated him with both cortisone and half a
grain of morphine sulphate, an abnormally high dose, and dangerous given
his breathing complications,probably did not help him any further. He
subsequently died in a coma , a few days later on November 9th, at St
Vincents Hospital in New York City at the age of 39. A tragic premature
end nevertheless to this great Welsh poet and writer. And despite the
myths that have emerged about his prodigous appetite for drinking it was
certainly not alcoholism that finished him off, as his liver showed no
signs of cirrhosis. The post mortem actually said that the primary cause
of Thomas's death was pneumonia, with pressure on the brain and a fatty
liver given as a contributing factor.Yes he had a love of alcohol, but
first and foremost he was a poet
the likes of which is seldom seen, and to define a man by his vices is
to
ignore his virtues.We should not let his reputation as a heavy drinker
overshadow his great literacy legacy.
One of the most entrancing
features Thomas possessed was his voice, a
seductive instrument which he used to enrich his performances that still
endures to this day, he remain a poet unlike any other. Dylan Thomas
took the very local and very specific and made it
universal. Across all of the forms that Dylan Thomas mastered, the
literary landscape was made all the richer by his creative exploration
of subjects that he returned to throughout his career: memory, childhood
and place. He wrote about the ways in which we belong to each other
and to the place that we call ‘home’.
Dylan Thomas's expressive, highly imaginative re-creation of forms and
language intimately portrays his inner self and his time, earning him
renown as one of the "great individualists of modern art."A few years before his death, Dylan Thomas gave
the following account of himself: ‘One: I am a Welshman; two: I am a
drunkard; three: I am a lover of the human race, especially of women.’
Although Thomas put his Welshness first, his relationship with Wales was
as enigmatic, and as problematic, as his relationships with women. This
together with Thomas’s English upbringing has made defining, and
accounting for, what it is that can be called Welsh in his work very
difficult.
He is buried in Laugharne, and has a memorial plaque in Poets corner in
Westminster Abbey I have long been a great admirer of his life and work
and his unfailing commitment to his craft, that continues to inspire.
Many have tried to imitate him. Some have got closer than others, but in
my experience, Dylan’s rare talent is hard to master.His work lay not only in perfect apposite creation
but also in its frugal use. He rarely ‘goes over the top’. His work is
the epitome of balance, while being cleverly inventive – but only when
necessary. For where Dylan Thomas felt he could improve the English
language, he did so, and our beautiful language is the richer for it.
A certain Mr Robert Allen
Zimmerman would arrive in New
York eight years after Dylan Thomas's death, telling everyone that his
name was Bob Dylan
(later admitting it was his way of honoring the late poet).This
influence extended beyond Dylan’s stage name though, going so far as to
shape his lyrical style and even the types of songs he chose to write.
That is another story I guess, but illustrates how Dylan Thomas had on
many that rode on his waves later, and the poets who have followed in
his footsteps who still owe a debt to his mighty mercurial talent.
While there are times when the often embellished tales of Dylan’s
tempestuous relationship with both Caitlin and alcohol have threatened
to overshadow the achievements of his literary work, today it is an
indisputable fact that Dylan has gone into history as one of Wales’ most
celebrated sons.Through writing so uniquely inventive that it alters the reader's
perception of language, Thomas left us with works that are as fresh and
relevant to today's world as they were at their debut.
His rich legacy lives on in his poems and plays, which are
still much loved and appreciated around the world, not just in Wales.
For a poet from a small Welsh town to become one of the best known
writers in the world in the 1950s was no mean feat, and so today, on
what would have been Dylan Thomas’ birthday, I raise a glass in honour to
one of Wales’ greatest literary heroes, Mr Dylan Thomas. Happy Birthday. Cheers.
Every
year the Dylan Thomas society of Great Britain lays a wreath at Poet's
Corner in Westminster Abbey on the anniversary of his death.
Poem in October
Poem in October
It was my thirtieth year to heaven
Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood
And the mussel pooled and the heron
Priested shore
The morning beckon
With water praying and call of seagull and rook
And the knock of sailing boats on the net webbed wall
Myself to set foot
That second
In the still sleeping town and set forth.
My birthday began with the water-
Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name
Above the farms and the white horses
And I rose
In rainy autumn
And walked abroad in a shower of all my days.
High tide and the heron dived when I took the road
Over the border
And the gates
Of the town closed as the town awoke.
A springful of larks in a rolling
Cloud and the roadside bushes brimming with whistling
Blackbirds and the sun of October
Summery
On the hill's shoulder,
Here were fond climates and sweet singers suddenly
Come in the morning where I wandered and listened
To the rain wringing
Wind blow cold
In the wood faraway under me.
Pale rain over the dwindling harbour
And over the sea wet church the size of a snail
With its horns through mist and the castle
Brown as owls
But all the gardens
Of spring and summer were blooming in the tall tales
Beyond the border and under the lark full cloud.
There could I marvel
My birthday
Away but the weather turned around.
It turned away from the blithe country
And down the other air and the blue altered sky
Streamed again a wonder of summer
With apples
Pears and red currants
And I saw in the turning so clearly a child's
Forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother
Through the parables
Of sun light
And the legends of the green chapels
And the twice told fields of infancy
That his tears burned my cheeks and his heart moved in mine.
These were the woods the river and sea
Where a boy
In the listening
Summertime of the dead whispered the truth of his joy
To the trees and the stones and the fish in the tide.
And the mystery
Sang alive
Still in the water and singingbirds.
And there could I marvel my birthday
Away but the weather turned around. And the true
Joy of the long dead child sang burning
In the sun.
It was my thirtieth
Year to heaven stood there then in the summer noon
Though the town below lay leaved with October blood.
O may my heart's truth
Still be sung
On this high hill in a year's turning.
1945
Do not go gentle into that good night
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave 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.
Poem on his birthday
In the mustardseed sun,
By full tilt river and switchback sea
Where the cormorants scud,
In his house on stilts high among beaks
And palavers of birds
This sandgrain day in the bent bay's grave
He celebrates and spurns
His driftwood thirty-fifth wind turned age;
Herons spire and spear.
Under and round him go
Flounders, gulls, on their cold, dying trails,
Doing what they are told,
Curlews aloud in the congered waves
Work at their ways to death,
And the rhymer in the long tongued room,
Who tolls his birthday bell,
Toesl towards the ambush of his wounds;
Herons, stepple stemmed, bless.
In the thistledown fall,
He sings towards anguish; finches fly
In the claw tracks of hawks
On a seizing sky; small fishes glide
Through wynds and shells of drowned
Ship towns to pastures of otters. He
In his slant, racking house
And the hewn coils of his trade perceives
Herons walk in their shroud,
The livelong river's robe
Of minnows wreathing around their prayer;
And far at sea he knows,
Who slaves to his crouched, eternal end
Under a serpent cloud,
Dolphins dyive in their turnturtle dust,
The rippled seals streak down
To kill and their own tide daubing blood
Slides good in the sleek mouth.
In a cavernous, swung
Wave's silence, wept white angelus knells.
Thirty-five bells sing struck
On skull and scar where his lovews lie wrecked,
Steered by the falling stars.
And to-morrow weeps in a blind cage
Terror will rage apart
Before chains break to a hammer flame
And love unbolts the dark
And freely he goes lost
In the unknown, famous light of great
And fabulous, dear God.
Dark is a way and light is a place,
Heaven that never was
Nor will be ever is always true,
And, in that brambled void,
Plenty as blackberries in the woods
The dead grow for His joy.
There he might wander bare
With the spirits of the horseshoe bay
Or the stars' seashore dead,
Marrow of eagles, the roots of whales
And wishbones of wild geese,
With blessed, unborn God and His Ghost,
And every soul His priest,
Gulled and chanter in Young Heaven's fold
Be at cloud quaking peace,
But dark is a long way.
He, on the earth of the night, alone
With all the living, prays,
Who knows the rocketing wind will blow
The bones out of the hills,
And the scythed boulders bleed, and the last
Rage shattered waters kick
Masts and fishes to the still quick starts,
Faithlessly unto Him
Who is the light of old
And air shaped Heaven where souls grow wild
As horses in the foam:
Oh, let me midlife mourn by the shrined
And druid herons' vows
The voyage to ruin I must run,
Dawn ships clouted aground,
Yet, though I cry with tumbledown tongue,
Count my blessings aloud:
Four elements and five
Senses, and man a spirit in love
Thangling through this spun slime
To his nimbus bell cool kingdom come
And the lost, moonshine domes,
And the sea that hides his secret selves
Deep in its black, base bones,
Lulling of spheres in the seashell flesh,
And this last blessing most,
That the closer I move
To death, one man through his sundered hulks,
The louder the sun blooms
And the tusked, ramshackling sea exults;
And every wave of the way
And gale I tackle, the whole world then,
With more triumphant faith
That ever was since the world was said,
Spins its morning of praise,
I hear the bouncing hills
Grow larked and greener at berry brown
Fall and the dew larks sing
Taller this thunderclap spring, and how
More spanned with angles ride
The mansouled fiery islands! Oh,
Holier then their eyes,
And my shining men no more alone
As I sail out to die
Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood
And the mussel pooled and the heron
Priested shore
The morning beckon
With water praying and call of seagull and rook
And the knock of sailing boats on the net webbed wall
Myself to set foot
That second
In the still sleeping town and set forth.
My birthday began with the water-
Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name
Above the farms and the white horses
And I rose
In rainy autumn
And walked abroad in a shower of all my days.
High tide and the heron dived when I took the road
Over the border
And the gates
Of the town closed as the town awoke.
A springful of larks in a rolling
Cloud and the roadside bushes brimming with whistling
Blackbirds and the sun of October
Summery
On the hill's shoulder,
Here were fond climates and sweet singers suddenly
Come in the morning where I wandered and listened
To the rain wringing
Wind blow cold
In the wood faraway under me.
Pale rain over the dwindling harbour
And over the sea wet church the size of a snail
With its horns through mist and the castle
Brown as owls
But all the gardens
Of spring and summer were blooming in the tall tales
Beyond the border and under the lark full cloud.
There could I marvel
My birthday
Away but the weather turned around.
It turned away from the blithe country
And down the other air and the blue altered sky
Streamed again a wonder of summer
With apples
Pears and red currants
And I saw in the turning so clearly a child's
Forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother
Through the parables
Of sun light
And the legends of the green chapels
And the twice told fields of infancy
That his tears burned my cheeks and his heart moved in mine.
These were the woods the river and sea
Where a boy
In the listening
Summertime of the dead whispered the truth of his joy
To the trees and the stones and the fish in the tide.
And the mystery
Sang alive
Still in the water and singingbirds.
And there could I marvel my birthday
Away but the weather turned around. And the true
Joy of the long dead child sang burning
In the sun.
It was my thirtieth
Year to heaven stood there then in the summer noon
Though the town below lay leaved with October blood.
O may my heart's truth
Still be sung
On this high hill in a year's turning.
1945
Do not go gentle into that good night
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave 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.
Poem on his birthday
In the mustardseed sun,
By full tilt river and switchback sea
Where the cormorants scud,
In his house on stilts high among beaks
And palavers of birds
This sandgrain day in the bent bay's grave
He celebrates and spurns
His driftwood thirty-fifth wind turned age;
Herons spire and spear.
Under and round him go
Flounders, gulls, on their cold, dying trails,
Doing what they are told,
Curlews aloud in the congered waves
Work at their ways to death,
And the rhymer in the long tongued room,
Who tolls his birthday bell,
Toesl towards the ambush of his wounds;
Herons, stepple stemmed, bless.
In the thistledown fall,
He sings towards anguish; finches fly
In the claw tracks of hawks
On a seizing sky; small fishes glide
Through wynds and shells of drowned
Ship towns to pastures of otters. He
In his slant, racking house
And the hewn coils of his trade perceives
Herons walk in their shroud,
The livelong river's robe
Of minnows wreathing around their prayer;
And far at sea he knows,
Who slaves to his crouched, eternal end
Under a serpent cloud,
Dolphins dyive in their turnturtle dust,
The rippled seals streak down
To kill and their own tide daubing blood
Slides good in the sleek mouth.
In a cavernous, swung
Wave's silence, wept white angelus knells.
Thirty-five bells sing struck
On skull and scar where his lovews lie wrecked,
Steered by the falling stars.
And to-morrow weeps in a blind cage
Terror will rage apart
Before chains break to a hammer flame
And love unbolts the dark
And freely he goes lost
In the unknown, famous light of great
And fabulous, dear God.
Dark is a way and light is a place,
Heaven that never was
Nor will be ever is always true,
And, in that brambled void,
Plenty as blackberries in the woods
The dead grow for His joy.
There he might wander bare
With the spirits of the horseshoe bay
Or the stars' seashore dead,
Marrow of eagles, the roots of whales
And wishbones of wild geese,
With blessed, unborn God and His Ghost,
And every soul His priest,
Gulled and chanter in Young Heaven's fold
Be at cloud quaking peace,
But dark is a long way.
He, on the earth of the night, alone
With all the living, prays,
Who knows the rocketing wind will blow
The bones out of the hills,
And the scythed boulders bleed, and the last
Rage shattered waters kick
Masts and fishes to the still quick starts,
Faithlessly unto Him
Who is the light of old
And air shaped Heaven where souls grow wild
As horses in the foam:
Oh, let me midlife mourn by the shrined
And druid herons' vows
The voyage to ruin I must run,
Dawn ships clouted aground,
Yet, though I cry with tumbledown tongue,
Count my blessings aloud:
Four elements and five
Senses, and man a spirit in love
Thangling through this spun slime
To his nimbus bell cool kingdom come
And the lost, moonshine domes,
And the sea that hides his secret selves
Deep in its black, base bones,
Lulling of spheres in the seashell flesh,
And this last blessing most,
That the closer I move
To death, one man through his sundered hulks,
The louder the sun blooms
And the tusked, ramshackling sea exults;
And every wave of the way
And gale I tackle, the whole world then,
With more triumphant faith
That ever was since the world was said,
Spins its morning of praise,
I hear the bouncing hills
Grow larked and greener at berry brown
Fall and the dew larks sing
Taller this thunderclap spring, and how
More spanned with angles ride
The mansouled fiery islands! Oh,
Holier then their eyes,
And my shining men no more alone
As I sail out to die
Especially When The October Wind
Especially when the October wind
With frosty fingers punishes my hair,
Caught by the crabbing sun I walk on fire
And cast a shadow crab upon the land,
By the sea's side, hearing the noise of birds,
Hearing the raven cough in winter sticks,
My busy heart who shudders as she talks
Sheds the syllabic blood and drains her words.
Shut, too, in a tower of words, I mark
On the horizon walking like the trees
The wordy shapes of women, and the rows
Of the star-gestured children in the park.
Some let me make you of the vowelled beeches,
Some of the oaken voices, from the roots
Of many a thorny shire tell you notes,
Some let me make you of the water's speeches.
Behind a pot of ferns the wagging clock
Tells me the hour's word, the neural meaning
Flies on the shafted disk, declaims the morning
And tells the windy weather in the cock.
Some let me make you of the meadow's signs;
The signal grass that tells me all I know
Breaks with the wormy winter through the eye.
Some let me tell you of the raven's sins.
Especially when the October wind
(Some let me make you of autumnal spells,
The spider-tongued, and the loud hill of Wales)
With fists of turnips punishes the land,
Some let me make you of the heartless words.
The heart is drained that, spelling in the scurry
Of chemic blood, warned of the coming fury.
By the sea's side hear the dark-vowelled birds.
With frosty fingers punishes my hair,
Caught by the crabbing sun I walk on fire
And cast a shadow crab upon the land,
By the sea's side, hearing the noise of birds,
Hearing the raven cough in winter sticks,
My busy heart who shudders as she talks
Sheds the syllabic blood and drains her words.
Shut, too, in a tower of words, I mark
On the horizon walking like the trees
The wordy shapes of women, and the rows
Of the star-gestured children in the park.
Some let me make you of the vowelled beeches,
Some of the oaken voices, from the roots
Of many a thorny shire tell you notes,
Some let me make you of the water's speeches.
Behind a pot of ferns the wagging clock
Tells me the hour's word, the neural meaning
Flies on the shafted disk, declaims the morning
And tells the windy weather in the cock.
Some let me make you of the meadow's signs;
The signal grass that tells me all I know
Breaks with the wormy winter through the eye.
Some let me tell you of the raven's sins.
Especially when the October wind
(Some let me make you of autumnal spells,
The spider-tongued, and the loud hill of Wales)
With fists of turnips punishes the land,
Some let me make you of the heartless words.
The heart is drained that, spelling in the scurry
Of chemic blood, warned of the coming fury.
By the sea's side hear the dark-vowelled birds.
The Force That Through The Green Fuse Drives The Flowet
The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.
The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.
The hand that whirls the water in the pool
Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind
Hauls my shroud sail.
And I am dumb to tell the hanging man
How of my clay is made the hangman's lime.
The lips of time leech to the fountain head;
Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood
Shall calm her sores.
And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.
And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.
The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.
The hand that whirls the water in the pool
Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind
Hauls my shroud sail.
And I am dumb to tell the hanging man
How of my clay is made the hangman's lime.
The lips of time leech to the fountain head;
Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood
Shall calm her sores.
And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.
And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.
And Death Shall Have No Dominion
And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men 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 seashore;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Through 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.
Selected Bibliography
Poetry
Poems (1971)
Collected Poems (1952)
In Country Sleep, And Other Poems (1952)
Deaths and Entrances (1946)
New Poems (1943)
The Map of Love (1939)
The World I Breath (1939)
Twenty-Five Poems (1936)
18 Poems (The Fortune press, 1934)
Prose
Early Prose Writings (1971)
Collected Prose (1969)
The Beach of Falesá (1964)
Letters to Vernon Watkins (1957)
Adventures in the Skin Trade, and Other Stories (1955)
A Prospect of the Sea (1955)
A Child’s Christmas in Wales (1954)
Quite Early One Morning (1954)
The Doctor and the Devils (1953)
The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog (1940)
Notebooks (1934)
Drama
Under Milk Wood (1954)
Dead men 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 seashore;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Through 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.
Selected Bibliography
Poetry
Poems (1971)
Collected Poems (1952)
In Country Sleep, And Other Poems (1952)
Deaths and Entrances (1946)
New Poems (1943)
The Map of Love (1939)
The World I Breath (1939)
Twenty-Five Poems (1936)
18 Poems (The Fortune press, 1934)
Prose
Early Prose Writings (1971)
Collected Prose (1969)
The Beach of Falesá (1964)
Letters to Vernon Watkins (1957)
Adventures in the Skin Trade, and Other Stories (1955)
A Prospect of the Sea (1955)
A Child’s Christmas in Wales (1954)
Quite Early One Morning (1954)
The Doctor and the Devils (1953)
The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog (1940)
Notebooks (1934)
Drama
Under Milk Wood (1954)
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