And Death Shall Have No Dominion by Dylan Thomas

Duration 7:30

_____


by Dylan Thomas


And Death Shall Have No Dominion


And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
and the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan't crack;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Though they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion.


_____


Should Lanterns Shine


Should lanterns shine, the holy face,
Caught in an octagon of unaccustomed light,
Would wither up, and any boy of love
Look twice before he fell from grace.
The features in their private dark
Are formed of flesh, but let the false day come
And from her lips the faded pigments fall,
The mummy cloths expose an ancient breast.

I have been told to reason by the heart,
But heart, like head, leads helplessly;
I have been told to reason by the pulse,
And, when it quickens, alter the actions' pace
Till field and roof lie level and the same
So fast I move defying time, the quiet gentleman
Whose beard wags in Egyptian wind.

I have heard may years of telling,
And many years should see some change.

The ball I threw while playing in the park
Has not yet reached the ground.


_____


There Was a Saviour


       There was a saviour
       Rarer than radium,
    Commoner than water, crueller than truth;
       Children kept from the sun
       Assembled at his tongue
    To hear the golden note turn in a groove,
Prisoners of wishes locked their eyes
In the jails and studies of his keyless smiles.

       The voice of children says
       From a lost wilderness
    There was calm to be done in his safe unrest,
       When hindering man hurt
       Man, animal, or bird
    We hid our fears in that murdering breath,
Silence, silence to do, when earth grew loud,
In lairs and asylums of the tremendous shout.

       There was glory to hear
       In the churches of his tears,
    Under his downy arm you sighed as he struck,
       O you who could not cry
       On to the ground when a man died
    Put a tear for joy in the unearthly flood
And laid your cheek against a cloud-formed shell:
Now in the dark there is only yourself and myself.

       Two proud, blacked brothers cry,
       Winter-locked side by side,
    To this inhospitable hollow year,
       O we who could not stir
       One lean sigh when we heard
    Greed on man beating near and fire neighbour
But wailed and nested in the sky-blue wall
Now break a giant tear for the little known fall,

       For the drooping of homes
       That did not nurse our bones,
    Brave deaths of only ones but never found,
       Now see, alone in us,
       Our own true strangers' dust
    Ride through the doors of our unentered house.
Exiled in us we arouse the soft,
Unclenched, armless, silk and rough love that breaks all rocks.


_____