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.
When you ask for an example of a sonnet, you'll likely be quoted Shakespeare; for an ode, you’ll probably be given Keats. For a villanelle, you’ll almost unfailingly be referred to Dylan Thomas (1914–1953), the Welsh poet who wrote “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” (1951). Even those who care little for poetry are apt to recognize its famous refrains, thanks to the poem’s appearances in pop culture and countless parodies.The poem was published the year before Thomas’s father died. Because the poem is a son’s address to his dying father, many assume that Thomas was inspired to write the poem as he watched his father nearing death. However, Thomas actually wrote the poem some years before in 1947.
The Dying of the Light
On reading the poem, one is struck by the seeming futility of human actions; this prompts the reader to wonder why it matters that we “rage against the dying of the light.” The poem insists that the act of dying isn’t a resignation, but rather a final expression of the love of life. Every entrance into this world promises an exit. The time and place aren’t fixed, but the event itself is certain. Yet we live our lives almost in disregard for and defiance of this fact, pouring our effort and energy into what we know will end. Why should our last moments be any different?The movement of the poem is an ebb and flow between the two refrains, which alternate with positive and negative imperatives. For the father, the tide comes in upon life’s shores. The waves recede, leaving the son awash in grief. As Irish poet Seamus Heaney noted, “Through its repetitions, the father’s remoteness—and the remoteness of all fathers—is insistently proclaimed, yet we can also hear, in an almost sobbing counterpoint, the protest of the poet’s child-self against the separation.” As much as death is part of the natural order of things, the speaker urges his father to see that the unwillingness to leave life is also part of this natural order.
To make his point, the speaker refers to how four different groups approach death. The wise men, who like Thomas Aquinas, come to the end of their lives’ work and realize that all their work and wise words “appears to be as so much straw.” They know death is part of the natural order. Even so, they go out lamenting the feebleness of their words.
The final two groups, wild men and grave men, present a contrast: those who were too little aware of their limited time and those who were too keenly aware of their own mortality. The wild men learn too late that they spent their time frivolously.
A Good Night
Each group’s rage springs from a revelation that comes too late. Their final insight and shifted perspective are only possible because they are so near death. With sudden clarity, each group realizes how much more they could do with life, and rebels against death. This rebellion is as much a part of the natural order as is death itself.Even while the speaker bids his father “Do not go gentle,” he acknowledges that the night is good. The many-layered meanings of “good night” point to the intensity and complexity of the emotions at parting. Viewed as a noun, the use of “good night” echoes the wisdom of the wise men that “dark is right.” However, there is a farewell in the words (“goodnight”), as well as a wish for the good night of another.
Heaney notes that, in the phrase “good night,” “[t]he mixture of salutation and farewell in the phrase is a perfect equivalent for the balance between natural grief and the recognition of necessity which pervades the poem as a whole.” There is both a curse and benediction in the shared sorrow of father and son: the desperation not to part, mixed with the reluctant acceptance that things must be this way.
The final stanza reveals that the son issues these commands as much for his own sake as for his father’s. To accept death with resignation would betray the life that came before, the years of living regardless of the eventual end. Death always interrupts action, regardless of the stage of life, and that we forget to think of it as an interruption makes the reminder necessary: “Old age should burn and rave at close of day.”
The father, like the other men mentioned in the poem, can’t go back and make amends or change the words and deeds of his life. All he can do is change is his volition; rather than passively accept what is certain, he can resist his life’s end that is forced upon him.
Accepting death would imply that the father had completed all he had wanted, or needed, to do in life. The son urges his father to rage against death because the father would show that his relationship with his son never ends. There’s never a point when either is ready to part, or has no more to give. This rage is entwined, not only with the preciousness of life, but also with the love between father and son.
