Do Not Go Gentle Into that Good Night by Dylan Thomas

You've probably read this classic Dylan Thomas poem before. It's written in a French form called the Villanelle, and a lot of its structure--the meter (iambic pentameter), the rhyme scheme, the stanza lengths, the repetition of the first and third line--is predetermined. The Villanelle is a good choice when a poet wants to keep pushing a certain sentiment, or, say, convey an obsession. In this case, Thomas uses the form to energize a son's pleas to his father, quickly infusing a high level of emotion. The speaker wants his father to fight for life while he still lives, and the poem seems to fight as well.


Do Not Go Gentle into that Good night

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.


Dylan Thomas was born in Wales in 1914. Fascinated by language, he excelled in English and reading, but neglected other subjects and dropped out of school at sixteen. His reading tours of the United States, which did much to popularize the poetry reading as new medium for the art, are famous and notorious, for Thomas was the archetypal Romantic poet of the popular American imagination: he was flamboyantly theatrical, a heavy drinker, engaged in roaring disputes in public, and read his work aloud with tremendous depth of feeling. He became a legendary figure, both for his work and the boisterousness of his life.