16.11.13

Poetry


Ambulances
Philip Larkin
Closed like confessionals, they thread
Loud noons of cities, giving back
None of the glances they absorb.
Light glossy grey, arms on a plaque,
They come to rest at any kerb:
All streets in time are visited.

Then children strewn on steps or road,
Or women coming from the shops
Past smells of different dinners, see
A wild white face that overtops
Red stretcher-blankets momently
As it is carried in and stowed,

And sense the solving emptiness
That lies just under all we do,
And for a second get it whole,
So permanent and blank and true.
The fastened doors recede. Poor soul,
They whisper at their own distress;

For borne away in deadened air
May go the sudden shut of loss
Round something nearly at an end,
And what cohered in it across
The years, the unique random blend
Of families and fashions, there

At last begin to loosen. Far
From the exchange of love to lie
Unreachable inside a room
The traffic parts to let go by
Brings closer what is left to come,
And dulls to distance all we are.
Church Going

By Philip Larking

Once I am sure there's nothing going on
I step inside, letting the door thud shut.
Another church: matting, seats, and stone,
And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut
For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff
Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;
And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,
Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence.

Move forward, run my hand around the font.
From where I stand, the roof looks almost new -
Cleaned, or restored? Someone would know: I don't.
Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few
Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce
'Here endeth' much more loudly than I'd meant.
The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door
I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,
Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.

Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,
And always end much at a loss like this,
Wondering what to look for; wondering, too,
When churches will fall completely out of use
What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep
A few cathedrals chronically on show,
Their parchment, plate and pyx in locked cases,
And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.
Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?

Or, after dark, will dubious women come
To make their children touch a particular stone;
Pick simples for a cancer; or on some
Advised night see walking a dead one?
Power of some sort will go on
In games, in riddles, seemingly at random;
But superstition, like belief, must die,
And what remains when disbelief has gone?
Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky,

A shape less recognisable each week,
A purpose more obscure. I wonder who
Will be the last, the very last, to seek
This place for what it was; one of the crew
That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?
Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,
Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff
Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?
Or will he be my representative,

Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt
Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground
Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt
So long and equably what since is found
Only in separation - marriage, and birth,
And death, and thoughts of these - for which was built
This special shell? For, though I've no idea
What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,
It pleases me to stand in silence here;

A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognized, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.

One Art

  by Elizabeth Bishop
The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant 
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied.  It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower

  by Dylan Thomas
The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.

The hand that whirls the water in the pool
Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind
Hauls my shroud sail.
And I am dumb to tell the hanging man
How of my clay is made the hangman's lime.

The lips of time leech to the fountain head;
Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood
Shall calm her sores.
And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.

And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.



After the Funeral (In memory of Ann Jones)

By Dylan Thomas
After the funeral, mule praises, brays,
Windshake of sailshaped ears, muffle-toed tap
Tap happily of one peg in the thick
Grave's foot, blinds down the lids, the teeth in black,
The spittled eyes, the salt ponds in the sleeves,
Morning smack of the spade that wakes up sleep,
Shakes a desolate boy who slits his throat
In the dark of the coffin and sheds dry leaves,
That breaks one bone to light with a judgment clout'
After the feast of tear-stuffed time and thistles
In a room with a stuffed fox and a stale fern,
I stand, for this memorial's sake, alone
In the snivelling hours with dead, humped Ann
Whose hodded, fountain heart once fell in puddles
Round the parched worlds of Wales and drowned each sun
(Though this for her is a monstrous image blindly
Magnified out of praise; her death was a still drop;
She would not have me sinking in the holy
Flood of her heart's fame; she would lie dumb and deep
And need no druid of her broken body).
But I, Ann's bard on a raised hearth, call all
The seas to service that her wood-tongud virtue
Babble like a bellbuoy over the hymning heads,
Bow down the walls of the ferned and foxy woods
That her love sing and swing through a brown chapel,
Blees her bent spirit with four, crossing birds.
Her flesh was meek as milk, but this skyward statue
With the wild breast and blessed and giant skull
Is carved from her in a room with a wet window
In a fiercely mourning house in a crooked year.
I know her scrubbed and sour humble hands
Lie with religion in their cramp, her threadbare
Whisper in a damp word, her wits drilled hollow,
Her fist of a face died clenched on a round pain;
And sculptured Ann is seventy years of stone.
These cloud-sopped, marble hands, this monumental
Argument of the hewn voice, gesture and psalm
Storm me forever over her grave until
The stuffed lung of the fox twitch and cry Love
And the strutting fern lay seeds on the black sill.
Dylan Thomas

Poem in October

It was my thirtieth year to heaven
Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood   
      And the mussel pooled and the heron
                  Priested shore
            The morning beckon
With water praying and call of seagull and rook
And the knock of sailing boats on the net webbed wall   
            Myself to set foot
                  That second
      In the still sleeping town and set forth.

      My birthday began with the water-
Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name   
      Above the farms and the white horses
                  And I rose   
            In rainy autumn
And walked abroad in a shower of all my days.
High tide and the heron dived when I took the road
            Over the border
                  And the gates
      Of the town closed as the town awoke.

      A springful of larks in a rolling
Cloud and the roadside bushes brimming with whistling   
      Blackbirds and the sun of October
                  Summery
            On the hill’s shoulder,
Here were fond climates and sweet singers suddenly   
Come in the morning where I wandered and listened   
            To the rain wringing
                  Wind blow cold
      In the wood faraway under me.

      Pale rain over the dwindling harbour
And over the sea wet church the size of a snail   
      With its horns through mist and the castle   
                  Brown as owls
            But all the gardens
Of spring and summer were blooming in the tall tales   
Beyond the border and under the lark full cloud.   
            There could I marvel
                  My birthday
      Away but the weather turned around.

      It turned away from the blithe country
And down the other air and the blue altered sky   
      Streamed again a wonder of summer
                  With apples
            Pears and red currants
And I saw in the turning so clearly a child’s
Forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother   
            Through the parables
                  Of sun light
      And the legends of the green chapels

      And the twice told fields of infancy
That his tears burned my cheeks and his heart moved in mine.   
      These were the woods the river and sea
                  Where a boy
            In the listening
Summertime of the dead whispered the truth of his joy   
To the trees and the stones and the fish in the tide.
            And the mystery
                  Sang alive
      Still in the water and singingbirds.

      And there could I marvel my birthday
Away but the weather turned around. And the true   
      Joy of the long dead child sang burning
                  In the sun.
            It was my thirtieth
Year to heaven stood there then in the summer noon   
Though the town below lay leaved with October blood.   
            O may my heart’s truth
                  Still be sung
      On this high hill in a year’s turning.


Fern Hill

  by Dylan Thomas
Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
     The night above the dingle starry,
          Time let me hail and climb
     Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
          Trail with daisies and barley
     Down the rivers of the windfall light.

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
     In the sun that is young once only,
          Time let me play and be 
     Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
          And the sabbath rang slowly
     In the pebbles of the holy streams.

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
     And playing, lovely and watery
          And fire green as grass.
     And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
     Flying with the ricks, and the horses
          Flashing into the dark.

And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
     Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
          The sky gathered again
     And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
     Out of the whinnying green stable
          On to the fields of praise.

And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
     In the sun born over and over,
          I ran my heedless ways,
     My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
     Before the children green and golden
          Follow him out of grace,

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
     In the moon that is always rising,
          Nor that riding to sleep
     I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
          Time held me green and dying
     Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

11.11.13

Write a critical appreciation of the symbols used by Dante in Canto I.



Introduction:
A complicated interpretation, metaphors and symbolism are found in every line of Dante’s Inferno. The first Canto is a canto of introduction to the whole Comedy. Midway of our life is 35 years. Therefore we are in 1300. The dark forest is symbolic of sin. Dante's Inferno indicates a journey. The journey is difficult and full of revelations, disappointment and questions, but they persevere. Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts. Some symbols are used in the following:
The Dark forest:
The dark forest is symbolic of sin. Dante loses his path in dark forest. The dark forest is a product of poet’s imagination. Danty finds the dark forest at the beginning of the poem which is describes in vague terms.
The Sun:
The sun is symbolic of God. Dante sees that the sun shines down from the Hilltop.
Dante also used some animal Symbolism in Canto I of Inferno that emulates the negative connotation within animal imagery assumed by Christianity. Dante's symbols are the leopard, the lion, and the she-wolf whose indicates the different categories of sins.
Leopard:
Dante used it for the sins of malice and fraud because the leopard, having a spotted pelt. The leopard will bide his time and strike at the most optimal moment, when its prey least suspects it.
Lion:
Dante uses the lion to denote sins of violence and ambition because the lion is considered to be an aggressive and assertive creature that has a tendency to satisfy his own needs. Dante makes a metaphoric symbol of the lion, as one who commits violent and/or ambitious sins can be compared with many similarities. The lion is also symbolic in Egyptian Mythology.
She-wolf:
Dante employs the she-wolf to represent the sins of incontinence that a human cannot resist, such as lust and adultery. He chooses the she-wolf as she is mysterious and because wolves tend to hunt in packs.
The protagonists of this travel are three, such as Dante, Virgil and Beatrice. Other major types of symbols include figures whose represent human qualities in the following: 
Dante:
 The 1st one is Dante himself, symbolic of whole mankind. Dante is author and main protagonist of Divine Comedy.
Virgil:
The 2nd one is Virgil, symbolic of human reason. He is a Dante's guide through Inferno and Purgatory. It was the famous Roman poet Virgil, who is Dante’s inspiration and all-time favorite idol. Virgil who lived under Julius Caeser and then Augustus. He is the most famous for his Aeneid. This epic poem recounts the journey of Aeneus from Troy.
Beatrice:
The 3rd one is Beatrice, who is representative of spiritual love.  A woman loved by Dante during his life. In the Divine Comedy, she’s the symbol of God’s love which can help the man to be saved. She is a Dante's guide through Paradiso.
Conclusion:
Dante’s main purpose in writing the Divine Comedy was to preach the necessity of a moral and religious renew for everybody, in order to get ready for the after-life and to ascend to Heaven, eternally saved. Dante acts as a prophet who speak in behalf of God to the whole mankind. In this sense, he’s strongly medieval and his poem is the higher expression of this culture.

Narrate the story of Canto I by Dante.



Introduction:
Dante is one of the greatest poets in the Italian language. Dante Alighieri was born in the city-state Florence in 1265. He first saw the woman, then he fell in love of Beatrice. Beatrice was a beautiful girl. In fact, Beatrice married another man and died when Dante was 25. He married to the daughter of the famous Donati family with the amount of her dowry. Dante Studies at the University of Bologna, one of the most famous universities in the medieval world. Dante's Inferno is the first of three parts of epic poem. The Devine Comedy which is an imaginary journey through Hell, Purgatory and Paradise. Dante speaks in the first person and interprets his experience.
The Structure of the Poem:
Dante designed the structure of his poem using a series of mystical numbers:
Three: The number of the Holy Trinity: God the father, the Son and the Holy Ghost; The number of parts of the Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatory and Paradise; The number of lines in each verse of each canto; The number of divisions of Hell; The number of days required for Dante's journey through Hell.
Nine: A multiple of three; the number of circles in Hell.
Ten: The perfect number is the nine circles of Hell plus the vestibule.
Thirty-Three: A multiple of three; the number of cantos in each part.
Ninety-Nine: The total number of cantos plus Canto I, The introduction.
One-Hundred: A multiple of ten; considered by Dante to be the perfect number.
Style:
Dante utilized Terza Rima in this poem with three lines stanzas. Within each stanza, the first and third lines rhyme, the middle line having a different end sound.
Themes:
Dante's Inferno is a classic tale that involves Christian morality and mythological and classical literature. In this tale we watch Virgil to guide Dante to pass through the circles of Hell in order to reach Heaven where Dante's beloved Beatrice awaits. Dante created this tale in order to give the world a visual image of afterlife.
Description of Canto I:
The middle of the journey, Dante is Author, protagonist and hero, who loses his way in the “dark woods”. He says that he does not remember how he lost his way, but he has wondered into a fearful place, a dark and tangled valley. He sees a great hill that the sun shines down from this Hilltop. Dante attempts to climb toward light. Then three angry beasts a leopard, a lion, and a she-wolf blocked the path and force him to turn back. Dante returns to the dark wood. Fortunately Dante sees a human form in the woods which is spirit of the great Roman epic poet Virgil. Virgil said that he has been sent by Beatrice who was beloved of Dante. Dante thrilled to meet the poet and tells Virgil about the three beasts. Virgil replies that the she-wolf kills all who approach her, a magnificent haunt will come to chase the she-wolf back to Hell and he also says they must decent Hell, Then he must go through PURGATORY. And finally he can ascend to PARADISE where Beatrice awaits. Dante followed Virgil as a guider. There are nine circles in the Hell. Limo is the first circle. It houses pagans, including Virgil and many of the other great writers and poet of antiquity. The 2nd through 5th circle are for the lustful, gluttonous, prodigal and warthful. The 6th circle is devoted to the punishment of heretics. The 7th circle is devoted to the punishment of violence. The 8th is devoted to the punishment of guilty of fraud and the 9th is for betrayed others. In the last section, there are a frozen lack. So, they must first pass through the place of Hell, then a place of Purgatory; only then they can reach God's city, Heaven.
Conclusion:
Dante's Divine Comedy is a moral comedy that is designed to make the readers think about their own morals. Dante's relationship with God is evident in his writing which described the experience of a deeply committed Christian. During the time he wrote in the middle Ages, this religious commitment was widely accepted and encouraged. It is the spiritual truth. Inferno takes the form of an allegory.

10.11.13

Consider Fern Hill as a poem on Childhood


Fern Hill was completed in 1945. This is a poem in which Thomas recreates his childhood experiences. For Thomas, childhood was a state of innocence and grace. Fern Hill is a nostalgic and melancholic. Thomas is showing us his childhood, when everything was fresh and new, everything was green, golden and bright.  He represents it to us a Welsh rural setting of green, wagons, apples, daisies, barley, light, a time and place in which he felt princely and lordly
Using outwardly native language and simple descriptions, Thomas creates an idyllic  sketch of a dairy farm in which his aunt Ann and uncle Jim had lived when he was a child. In this lyrical poem about childhood, he said he was "young and easy", Thomas uses words and phrases which recreate a child's interpretation of the world.
Describing how as he "rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away", he recreates a typical childish fantasy that the world disappears when it is no longer visible. The sense of youthful freedom is reinforced by the form of the poem.
Absent from Fern Hill is the adult narrator, who views the past with a mixture of nostalgia and cynicism. Thomas emphasises through repetition that this pastoral world is green and golden. The ringing of the church bells combine to make a music expressing a world that is peaceful, joyous and holy. The Peaches, which is "so poor and grand and dirty". Childhood is recreated as a sensuous experience which is not relegated to memory like the "long dead child" from Thomas' first-person Poem In October.
For the first four stanzas nothing bad is allowed to intrude on Thomas' youthful paradise: even Eve is referred to indirectly in her pre-Fall innocent state as a 'maiden'. But in the final stanzas the mood changes and we are reminded about the passage of time which holds him "green and dying". He reintroduces familiar themes of mortality, religion and the endless progression of time.
Thomas tells us that each morning was like the first morning of Creation. He would return to waking consciousness and find the farm, gone during the night, come back “like a wanderer white with dew”, the cock that cries the morning on his shoulder. Not at all a prosaic statement like, “I woke on the farm and heard the rooster on the fence crowing.” Again Thomas presents us with images of light and freshness: “It was all shining,/It was adam and maiden”. The sun never aged, but was continually born afresh: “The sun grew round that very day”.
Thomas speaks here of “The sun born over and over,” which seems in direct contradiction to his earlier mention of “the sun that is young once only.” the solution is that by “born over and over” he is referring to the actual individual days of his childhood while bye “the sun that is young once only” he is referring to his childhood as an entire period. The sun of childhood is “young once only.” and then childhood with its bright, golden light is gone forever.
Thomas always returns to the larger philosophical issues of life. The tone and vocabulary of Fern Hill are deceptively (বিভ্রান্তিকর) native and simple, and serious themes linger in the background throughout. The poem has a visionary quality. This idea, the loss of innocence is repeated in the final stanza. Fern Hill is narration's childhood of a man as he faces his death, portrays the universal truth of human mortality and death in the natural life cycle

Consider After The Funeral as an elegy


Dylan Thomas was born in Wales, in 1914. Dylan Thomas is one of the writers who has often been associated with Welsh literature and culture in the last sixty years. He is possibly the most notable Welsh author. Fortunately, it is mainly his literary work, and not his tumultuous lifestyle. The analysis of some of his poems mirrors his sincere relationship to Wales. On November 9, 1953, he died after a heavy drinking binge in a Manhattan hotel, at the age of 39. 'After the Funeral' is one of the most famous poem. An elegy poem is a poem that is written on the occasion of or about someone's death.
The theme of an elegy is remembrance of the dead. 'After The Funeral' is an elegy to Thomas' aunt Ann Jones with whom he shared a deep bond. The death of Aunt Jones left a profound impact on the poet. The poem "Fern-Hill" commemorates the happy moments he spent on Aunt Jones' farm. This particular poem stands apart from the other poems of Thomas: it is the only one that is associated with an individual while others deal with experiences or abstractions.
The poem begins in the typical style of the elegy expressing contempt for the hypocritical mourners whose formal salutations of grief are depicted as "mule praises" and "brays". They appear like asses in their superficiality and shook they ass-like ears rendering the tragic situation a mockery. They walked "muffle-toed' in keeping with the atmosphere of the funeral. "Tap-tap" also refers to the sound of nails being hammered into the coffin.
The phrase 'tap happily' implies how the people were secretly happy that the tap was not for meant for them. The phrase "thick grave's foot" is utilized as a metaphor where the coffin is imagined to be the foot of the grave, for it serves the purpose of carrying dead bodies to their grave. 'Blinds down the lids' refers to the shutting of the coffin. It may also signify the veiling of the real emotions of the mourners by their phony tears. The black outfits meant for the funeral foreground their teeth:"teeth in black". They appear to have "spitted" their eyes with saliva to give the impression that they have been weeping intensely. Their sleeves appear to be drenched in tears-"salt ponds in their sleeves"-an exaggeration of their actions.
The sound of the spade in the early morning likely to wake a sleep, shakes a boy overcome with the feeling of desperation and desolation. The "phrase "slits his throat" has two meanings .One' it may signify the boy's emotional death. Secondly, it may indicate his vow to honour the remembrance of his late Aunt. Unlike the others who shed superficial tears he sheds dry leaves. The dry leaves points to his poetic output/elegies that has lost its sparkle as he has lost his major source of inspiration. The line:" That breaks one bone to light with a judgment clout" alludes to his failure in paying tribute to the noble traits of Aunt Jones in his judgemental fervour .The time at the present was dominated by tears and thistles."Thistles" a prickly bush, is emblematic of the death of the Aunt .The experience is concretized as a thistle as it intensely pained his heart. He is left in the room alone to encounter the 'stuffed fox and stale fern' that served as embellishments in his aunt's room. He stays for the sole purpose of commemorating her; he spends 'snivelling' hours of intense grief He calls her 'humped Ann" as she was a hunch-back bent over by age and torment:

In the snivelling hours with dead, humped Ann
Whose hodded, fountain heart once fell in puddles
Round the parched worlds of Wales and drowned each sun
(Though this for her is a monstrous image blindly
Her heart that was overflowing with the fountain of generosity was 'hooded' in modesty. She did not make an exhibition of her magnanimity."Water" is a symbol of generosity here; in comparison, the people around Wales seemed 'parched'. She also drowned the sun with her tremendous warmth and the radiance of her love.
Magnified out of praise; her death was a still drop;
She would not have me sinking in the holy
Flood of her heart's fame; she would lie dumb and deep
And need no druid of her broken body).
The poet states that he had praised her in a magnified manner: in an extravagant way that was in opposition to the simplicity that she practiced and embodied. She would not long for her selfless emotions to verge on fame. She would rather lie serenely deep in her grave and prefer a dignified silence, rather than having a poet(druid) ranting over her.
Though Ann Jones prefers to be left in peace, the speaker wants to act as a bard so that he can give vent to his woes. Her death has influenced him tremendously. He summons the sea to bemoan his Aunt's demise and extol her virtues. Her low-profile virtues will be voiced through the poem. Thereby her love will express its harmony like the choir .The bells of the brown chapel will hail her through its swinging, and salute and bless her spirit. The four crossing birds will descend in all four directions outlining the cross of Jesus Christ in the process. In appears that Christ has blessed Ann Jones in this manner. Her flesh was as meek and milky as milk. The poet implies that though it was milky, it was not a flamboyant white.
He likens the elegy to a piece of sculpture sculpted by a sculptor. The statue is carved from her memories in a room with a wet window. The window is a metaphor for the eyes as it is also a device to 'look through'. The poet therefore may refer to his moist eyes. The 'year' is prefixed with the adjective 'crooked' as it has deprived him of his beloved aunt. She was forever engaged in domestic chores-therefore her hands are termed as "scrubbed and sour."The only thing she takes with her to the grave or that which would serve some purpose in her after-life is her religious way of life. Her last whisper that was moist in her being still alive also comes across as something religious. Her mind was benumbed with intense suffering-"wits drilled hollow." Her face appeared to be like a clenched fist as the muscles were strained owing to the strain in the last moments of anguish.
"And sculptured Ann is seventy years of stone."
The line reflects the steadfastness in her way of life and her undeterred religious stance. It also refers to the clenched figure of his Aunt. As the sculpted statue heads sky-wards, it appears "cloud-sopped". The sculpted statue expressed her goodness through her carved out virtues. Her psalms and gestures will continue to haunt the poet till :
The stuffed lung of the fox twitch and cry Love
And the strutting fern lay seeds on the black sill.
It will continue to fill his thought-process till the poetic release is complete. It will impart the lesson of love to others till the stale fern regains life and sprouts again.

Charactistics of Dylan Thomas.


Dylan Thomas was born in Swansea, Wales, in 1914. After he left school at the age of sixteen, he started working as a journalist in Swansea. In 1937, he married Caitlin who gave birth to three children. These circumstances indicate a typical British, conservative and straightforward approach to family life. However, Dylan started drinking heavily and Caitlin is rumored to have had several extramarital affairs, even with colleagues and friends of her husband. They could not cover their costs anymore. Thus, in 1950, Thomas announced that he would emigrate to the United States because he thought he would be paid better there than in England. He settled in New York where he recited his works, and was profoundly admired. Nevertheless, the money he earned was spent on alcohol, which led his marriage with Caitlin into a serious crisis. On November 9, 1953, he died after a heavy drinking binge in a Manhattan hotel, at the age of 39. Later, Thomas‟s body was brought "home" to Wales. He was buried in the churchyard of Laugharne. Dylan Thomas was influenced in his writing by the Romantic Movement from the beginning of the nineteenth century, and this can be seen in a number of his best works. Dylan Thomas uses symbols and images of nature to express how he feels towards death and childhood. He says that images are used to create a feeling of love towards life.
a) Dylan Thomas heralded a new kind of poetry in the twentieth century. It was so different from the realism of Eliot and Auden.
b) The first quality which according to a critic, strikes reader of Thomas's poetry is its lyrical, musical quality. Thomas's early writing was strongly criticized as being obscure.
c) In his poem there is an intensity born out of the struggle to give expression to very powerful feeling.
d) He writes with an elegiac appreciation of natural force, the force of birth, sex and death.
e) Thomas realized the problem for his readers. He said himself that his poetry was rigorously compressed.
f) Thomas's early works were criticized in other respects also. Besides their lack of meaning, people argued that they were concerned solely with birth, death and population. Thomas described his early work as his 'womb-tomb' period.
g) Thomas sees life as a continuous process. He sees the working of bio9logy as a magical transformation producing unity out of identity and identity out of unity. He sees the generations linked with one another, and man linked with nature.
h) Some of the early poems see death as a threat, a 'running grave'. In the first London days, it was thought that Thomas would die within a few years.
I) Death can be personified and symbolized; pathos is a ready emotion. But a fullness of life cannot successfully be shown as a person or a symbol.
j) The development of Thomas's poetry can be seen by an examination of the verse itself; but he also explained what he was trying to do in his letters and his prose comments on his poetry.
k) His best poem affirm with a great passion vigor the joys and beauties of life, even in the midst of death.
l) His major theme was the unity of all life, the continuing process of life and death and new life that linked the generations to each other.