Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Dylan Thomas
- First Published: 1951
- Type of Work: Lyric
- Genres: Poetry, Lyric poetry
- Subjects: Parents and children, Courage, Fathers, Death or dying, Life and death, Old age or elderly people, Aging, Sun, Night
The Poem
This nineteen-line lyric consists of five tercets (groupings of three lines) and a concluding quatrain (a four-line stanza). Addressed to the poet’s father, it gives him advice about how he ought to die.
In the first tercet, Dylan Thomas tells his father to defy death. After the first line, however, he generalizes about old age, declaring that it should “burn and rave” against dying. This message is contrary to the usual association of a peaceful dying with good character and a virtuous life. Such an association, for example is found in John Donne’s “A...
[The entire page is 1499 words long]
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