![]() ![]() Some speculate that Thomas may have begun “Do not go gentle into that good night” in 1945, when his father’s ill-health first began to seem serious, but there is little reason (other than a somewhat inflated contemporary estimate of how difficult it is to write a villanelle) to suppose that Thomas took six years to write his famous villanelle. Rage, rage, against the dying of the light. Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sightīlind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,Īnd you, my father, there on the sad height,Ĭurse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,Īnd learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Though wise men at their end know dark is right,īecause their words had forked no lightning they Old age should burn and rave at close of day “‘I have just finished the short poem I enclose,” he wrote, adding a brief despondent postscript: “The only person I can’t show the little enclosed poem to is, of course, my father, who doesn’t know he’s dying” ( Letters 800): ![]() On the 28 th of March 1951, Thomas sent “Do not go gentle into that good night” to his friend Princess Marguerite Caetani, founder and editor of the journal Botteghe Oscure. ![]()
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