A Refusal to Mourn the Death by Fire of a Child

A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London

by Dylan Thomas

Poem In October

Poem in October

BY DYLAN THOMAS

It was my thirtieth year to heaven ...

Poem on his Birthday - by Dylan Thomas

Poem on his Birthday by Dylan Thomas

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 alwas 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 youg 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 stars,

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 thuderclap 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 d

Fern Hill By Dylan Thomas

Fern Hill by Dylan Thomas

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs

About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,

The night above the dingle starry,

Time let me hail and climb

Golden in the heydays of his eyes,

And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns

And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves

Trail with daisies and barley

Down the rivers of the windfall light.

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns

About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,

In the sun that is young once only,

Time let me play and be

Golden in the mercy of his means,

And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves

Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,

And the sabbath rang slowly

In the pebbles of the holy streams.

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay

Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air

And playing, lovely and watery

And fire green as grass.

And nightly under the simple stars

As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,

All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars

Flying with the ricks, and the horses

Flashing into the dark.

And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white

With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all

Shining, it was Adam and maiden,

The sky gathered again

And the sun grew round that very day.

So it must have been after the birth of the simple light

In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm

Out of the whinnying green stable

On to the fields of praise.

And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house

Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,

In the sun born over and over,

I ran my heedless ways,

My wishes raced through the house high hay

And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows

In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs

Before the children green and golden

Follow him out of grace.

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would

take me

Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,

In the moon that is always rising,

Nor that riding to sleep

I should hear him fly with the high fields

And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.

Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,

Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

Another marriage of the sacred and profane in service of commerce.

There is something crass, cynical and vulgar about using great actors reciting epic poetry to pitch banks (in this case, The Union Bank of Switzerland). 

In this 1988 attempt to appeal to a wealthier clientele, the use of insipid elevator music to underscore the narration is needlessly trivializing, but after all, this was John Gielgud, who may not have invented English stage recitation, but certainly perfected it.

Here, he recites a selection from Lord Alfred Tennyson's Ulysses. 

Come, my friends,

'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.

Push off, and sitting well in order smite

The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds

To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths

Of all the western stars, until I die.

It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:

It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,

And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.

Though much is taken, much abides; and though

We are not now that strength which in the old days

Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are,

One equal-temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Ulysses (excerpt)

Alfred Lord Tennyson

PS The Tag line to this commercial was, "Union Bank of Switzerland. Here today. Here tomorrow". Now, if that ain't anti-poetry, it will do until something uglier comes along. And look-y, look-y. Here it comes now. 

Update: I understood when an international bank used famous actors to recite classic poetry over insipid music followed by tasteless, anti-poetic tag lines (e.g., "Union Bank of Switzerland. Here today. Here tomorrow.") as an attempt to attract wealthy and presumably highly cultured investors. 

But wedding professional wrestling - or whatever the hell is being sold here - to a spectral voice reciting Dylan Thomas' poetry over primordial swamp music as rapid fire scenes of hormonal goons contemplating the physical mayhem each is about to wreak on the other assaults the senses. 

This is truly a marriage of the sacred and profane. 

I trust Mr. Thomas' estate has been properly compensated. 

2.16.12