Dylan Thomas's grave. Did he go gentle?

Dylan Thomas was the archetypal Romantic poet: flamboyantly theatrical, a heavy drinker, constantly courting controversy in his private life.

Do not go gentle into that good night is his most famous poem, with its immortal last line: "Rage, rage against the dying of the light"

Dylan Thomas became a legendary figure, both for his work and the boisterousness of his life. He died at St Vincents Hospital, New York, on November 9th, 1953, at the age of 39 after a particularly long drinking bout. His body was sent back to Laugharne, Wales, where his grave is marked by a simple wooden cross.

Not much to learn from there. But "Rage, rage against the dying of the light" is surely one of the greatest lines ever written...

Do not go gentle into that good night [A Villanelle]

Dylan Thomas. Funny-looking chap, but chicks dug him.

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.

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.

Dylan Thomas, 1951 or 1952

A Villanelle is a 19-line poem consisting of five tercets and a final quatrain on two rhymes, with the first and third lines of the first tercet repeated alternately as a refrain closing the succeeding stanzas and joined as the final couplet of the quatrain. The word is French, derived from Italian villanella, the feminine of villanello, rustic; from villano, peasant; from Vulgar Latin villanus; from Latin villa, a country house.

"Addressed to the poet's father as he approached blindness and death. The relevant aspect of the relationship was Thomas's profound respect for his father's uncompromising independence of mind, now tamed by illness. In the face of strong emotion, the poet sets himself the task of mastering it in the difficult form of the villanelle. Five tercets are followed by a quatrain, with the first and last line of the stanza repeated alternately as the last line of the subsequent stanzas and gathered into a couplet at the end of the quatrain. And all this on only two rhymes. Thomas further compounds his difficulty by having each line contain 10 syllables".

Dylan Thomas: Selected Poems
Edited by Walford Davies,
JM Dent & Sons Ltd, London, 1974
pp 131-33