Sonnet 116

William Shakespeare

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no; it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Sea Fever

John Masefield (1878-1967), Poet Laureate 1930-1967, from Salt-Water Ballads (1902)

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking,

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.

Do not go gentle into that good night

Dylan Thomas (1914-1953), originally published 1951

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.


One Interpretation

Thomas wrote this poem for his dying father. It has the strict form of a villanelle consisting of five stanzas of three lines and a final stanza of four lines.

The narrator is suggesting the way we should respond to the inevitability of death. Thomas has divided people into four types—wise, good, wild and grave—and the implication is that these are all the possible types of humanity. That is, some people are essentially rational in their approach to the world, some are moral, some are action orientated and some are serious.

People who approach the world rationally have thought about death and know that it is inevitable, a requirement for life to have evolved. However, because nothing they ever said or wrote made any difference (‘forked no lightning’), when death comes they do not accept it as inevitable but fight against it.

Good people see with hindsight that their moral acts were as nothing (‘frail’) and that if they had been better those deeds might have been ‘bright’. However, even then they would only have ‘danced in a green bay’, suggesting a bright flash of sunlight on the breaking crest of a wave. So, even the best people’s deeds last a fraction of a second and therefore they do not go gently towards death.

Action orientated people (‘wild men’) may have performed the most amazing feats (catching the sun in flight) but even they see, looking back on their lives, that it just resulted in sadness and grieving so they also fight the coming of death.

Serious people understand, too late, that their lives could have been different and they could have seen the world as a bright and happy place. But it is too late and so they also rage against death approaching.

Thomas then discusses his father. Someone who has been sad, perhaps a serious person, a ‘grave’ man. He wants him now to react strongly towards his son, whether it is cursing or blessing him, and through that reaction fight against the inevitability of death.