[1486] And Death Shall Have No Dominion

Guest poem sent in by Linda Roberts <Linda.Roberts@>

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 seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Though 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.

	-- Dylan Thomas

I checked the archives for this poem and was rather surprised not to find
it. I find it interesting, not only as one of that subset of poems that defy
death, much like Donne's "Death be not proud" (Poem #796) but also for the
interesting form used. It's not a villanelle or a rondeau. I'll admit my
ignorance and ask that if someone knows the name of this form I'd like to
learn it.

As a recent widow I find myself remembering odd bits of poetry dealing with
death. While this may sound morbid, I usually find it fairly comforting -
especially such lines as "though lovers be lost, love shall not."

Lollee

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance Tax Center - File online. File on time.
http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html

[this poem is archived, accessible and awaiting your comments at]
http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/1487.html
To subscribe, send a blank mail to <minstrels-subscribe@>.


Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
     http://groups.yahoo.com/group/minstrels/

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
     minstrels-unsubscribe@

     http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/

From: "lpaganin" <lpaganin@>

Actually, death has all dominion--contrary to Thomas's opposite claim in
this poem. All great art admits the finality (the all-encompassing dominion)
of death. I wish that death had no dominion--that it couldn't destroy all
lives (and poets). But it does. Thomas's poem (however well-written) isn't
insightful; it isn't true: It denies the finality of death. His poem offers
us a typical religiosity: "We'll all survive--in some form--after we are
dead," he writes. No: Only memories of us will (and memories of us aren't
exactly us.)   -- Dustin Smith  (My favorite poet: Elizabeth Bishop--who
never would have written this sort of wishful-thinker's rant against the
inevitable. Read her poems--on this site, under "B"!)

From: Bob Willison <willison@>

you miss the whole point of this poem. Read Thomas' other works and you'll
see.  Death only becomes Lord, using the Latin derivative, if one doesn't
believe in Jesus as Savior.

From: "Ari y Henry" <arihen@>

Hi friends,
sometime ago a friend of mine gave me this wonderful poem. I have read it
thousend times but english is not my mothertonge so I am not able to
understand the full meaning. Could someone of you deliver me a good
translation into spanish???. Thank you very much.
Arantza

From: C Horton <chrishorton@>

Just as the chemicals that have to come together and create all from the
smallest to the largest, death does not have dominion; they all live on.
Even if this rock we call Earth was to be split into millions of bits,
those forces that created all in the first place will live. Dominion
over life is only a bleak way to look at some sort of end.