[225] Poem In October
October finally rolls around...
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.
-- Dylan Thomas
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One of those wonderful poems which make you feel glad just to be alive.
I've mentioned Thomas' skill in using the compressed metaphor before [1]. Poem
In October has many beautiful examples of his art: phrases like 'the
heron-priested shore', 'a springful of larks', 'the parables of sun light' and
'the legends of the green chapels' fairly shimmer with joy and wonder and
mystical beauty.
Simply glorious.
thomas.
[1] In the commentary to Fern Hill, poem #138
As a matter of fact, Fern Hill is very similar to today's poem in theme,
especially in the sense of almost religious awe in the face of the beauty and
majesty of Nature... read it!
[More Analysis]
George MacBeth has quite a bit to say about today's poem...
"This has great interest as one of the earliest poems written in England in
syllabics, a metre later to be exploited by Thom Gunn and other poets. The
mathematical principle underlying the syllabic form was not always appreciated
by critics of Thomas, to whom the rhythms of this poem seemed flaccid and its
metrical pattern purely visual and arbitrary. A syllabic metre depends on the
presence of a given number of syllables in each line, but no given number of
feet or stresses as in iambic or accentual verse, In this case the number of
syllables per line in each stanza is as follows: 9,12,9,3,5,12,12,5,3,9. This
number sequence is repeated throughout the poem. The effect is great ease and
rapidity of movement combined with a delicate precision of form. Thomas
contrives to retain the forcefulness of his earlier poetry by ending each line
with a strong word, often a noun. This keeps the metre from becoming too loose.
The poem itself is an exquisitely gay and cheerful one. It describes how a man
gets up early in the morning on his birthday and goes out for a walk through the
country to a place where he can look down on the town where he lives. The man is
almost certainly Thomas himself, and the town Swansea, where he was born.
The rhyme scheme of the poem is highly original. It seems to depend on normally
using the same vowel sound but different consonants, so that the word 'water'
can rhyme with the word 'horse'. Thomas is not completely consistent about this,
but he is consistent enough for the principle to be observable."
-- George MacBeth, Poetry 1900-1975.
[Minstrels Links]
There's a brief biography of Dylan Thomas accompanying one of the very first
poems to be run on the Wondering Minstrels, Thomas' Prologue to his Collected
Poems, at poem #14
Prologue is a denser work (both in sound and meaning) than Poem In October.
Closer to today's poem in form and spirit is the beautiful Fern Hill,
poem #138
The commentary accompanying Fern Hill has more material on compressed metaphors
and syllabic verse; it also talks about Thomas' poetic philosophy. You can learn
more about the latter by reading everybody's favourite Dylan Thomas poem, the
utterly magnificent Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, poem #38
From: United Palestinian Appeal <upa@>
somehow, the rich and complex language in Thomas' poetry is never
overdone. Thomas lets on towards the end of Poem in October that he
thinks his death may not be so far away, and, after all, he sees the
hills leaved with "October blood." in spite of that mortality, he is
still able to capture the mystical beauty of life in his own special
way.
Saahir Lone
--
Saahirlone@
From: "Charles Bane" <cbane@>
Finest poem in English in the 20th Century.Thomas's poetic gift at the
height.
From: "muriel.williams" <muriel.williams1@>
From: "=?iso-8859-1?q?P.=20Srikant?=" <srikant_p@>
> I turned 24 this week - and encountered another poem
> Dylan Thomas wrote on
> another birthday ..
> Twenty-four years
>
> Twenty-four years remind the tears of my eyes.
>
> (Bury the dead for fear that they walk to the grave
> in labour.)
>
> In the groin of the natural doorway I crouched like
> a tailor
>
> Sewing a shroud for a journey
>
> By the light of the meat-eating sun.
>
>
> Dressed to die, the sensual strut begun.
>
> With my red veins full of money,
>
> In the final direction of the elementary town
>
> I advance as long as forever is.
>
Well, what can I add to something like that ..
Srikant
From: "isabel" <is_lofts@>
My thanks to John Franklin for introducing me to the works of Dylan
Thomas in 1958. I have been a lifelong fan
isabel