And Death Shall Have No Dominion

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And Death Shall Have No Dominion

by Dylan Thomas

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.

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Miscellany

Dylan-thomas


Other poems by Dylan Thomas (read randomly)

Light breaks where no sun shines;
Where no sea runs, the waters of the heart
Push in their tides;

A stranger has come
To share my room in the house not right in the head …
A girl mad as birds

There once was a Square, such a square little Squar …
And he loved a trim Triangle;
But she was a flirt and around her skirt

My hero bares his nerves along my wrist
That rules form wrist to shoulder,
Unpacks the head that, like a sleepy ghost,

Now
Say nay,
Man dry man,

The sky is torn across
This ragged anniversary of two
Who moved for three years in tune

On no work of words now for three lean months in th …
bloody
Belly of the rich year and the big purse of my body

Waking alone in a multitude of loves when morning's …
Surprised in the opening of her nightlong eyes
His golden yesterday asleep upon the iris

Once it was the colour of saying
Soaked my table the uglier side of a hill
With a capsized field where a school sat still

Our eunuch dreams, all seedless in the light,
Of light and love, the tempers of the heart,
Whack their boy’s limbs,

It was my thirtieth year to heaven
Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood
And the mussel pooled and the heron

Should lanterns shine, the holy face,
Caught in an octagon of unaccustomed light,
Would wither up, and any boy of love