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The Daily Poem

Dylan Thomas' "Do Not Go Gently"

The Daily Poem

Goldberry Studios

Education For Kids, Arts, Kids & Family

4.6729 Ratings

🗓️ 14 January 2019

⏱️ 7 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Welcome to The Daily Poem. Today's poem is Dylan Thomas' "Do Not Go Gently."


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Transcript

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0:00.0

Welcome back to the Daily Poem here in the Close Reeds Podcast Network. I'm David Kern.

0:09.7

Today's poem is by a Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas, who lived from 1914 to 1953. It's his most famous work.

0:17.1

It's called Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night. Frankly, I'm a little surprised. I haven't read

0:22.3

this poem yet on this show. But it's high time, so we'll go ahead and read this one for this week.

0:28.1

In his anthology, the classic 100 poems, William Harmon writes, quote, Thomas belonged in a great

0:34.2

tradition that includes William Blake, John Keats, Thomas Hardy, Gerard Manley Hopkins,

0:38.4

and William Butler Yates, poets who sang ecstatically and wisely of birth, love, death, and glory.

0:45.8

So this is, Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night by Dylan Thomas.

0:51.4

Do not go gentle into that good night. Old age should burn and rave at close of day.

0:59.0

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

1:03.0

The wise men, at their end, no dark is right, because their words had forked no lightning, they do not go gentle into that good

1:12.3

night.

1:14.0

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright their frail deeds might have danced in a green

1:20.2

bay.

1:21.4

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

1:24.9

Wild men, who caught and sang the sun in flight and learned too late, they grieved it

1:30.1

on its way. Do not go gentle into that good night. Gravemen near death who see with blinding sight,

1:38.2

blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

1:46.1

And you, my father, there on the sad height, curse, bless me now with your fierce tears,

1:52.4

I pray, do not go gentle into that good night.

1:56.2

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

2:01.0

Harmon mentions in the introduction to this poem in the anthology

...

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