Dylan Thomas, A refusal to mourn the death, by fire, of a child in London

Dylan Thomas was steeped in Protestant and Biblical culture and rhetoric, and

this permeates his work.

Christianity is not synonymous with Catholicism.
Be aware of the World War II background to this poem and, in particular, the

London Blitz.

Take into account these two background aspects: the religious and the

historical.
You will probably be very challenged and almost certainly baffled by the
syntax of the first thirteen lines, the main verb of which (Shall I) is displaced

towards the end of the long, unpunctuated opening sentence.

what is the immediate effect here? Answer: to frustrate and delay

comprehension!
Incomprehension is a perfectly reasonable response
The issue here is what is to be gained from Thomas strategy, what is its

effect on the reader.

In Understanding Poetry (1976, 4th edition), poets Cleanth Brooks and Robert
Penn Warren suggest their own prose paraphrase of the opening sentence:

Never until the darkness that begets and humbles all tells me that hour of my own
death will I utter any prayer or weep any tear to mourn the majesty of this childs
death. Using their own Biblical term (begets means fathers or engenders), they
ask not unreasonably, How accurate is the paraphrase?

Other aspects such as the Christian context; the second stanza, for example
(And I must enter again), should be appreciated for its King James Biblical
cadences and allusions. As Ian Lancashire writes in his online interpretation of
the poem, Thomas uses [] ordinary words, everyones vocabulary, but their
combinations make them new. Although we have not heard [these combinations]
before, they remind many people of the King James version of the Bible, and
they share with Biblical scripture both immediacy and simplicity

(http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/3357.html).

An example or two from the King James Bible will help illustrate

Lancashires point.
Terms such as Zion and synagogue of the ear of corn take the reader to a
broad Judeo-Christian tradition.
a. What and where was Zion? what was its significance?
1

The digital 2008 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica has this to say about
Zion:
In the Old Testament, the easternmost of the two hills of ancient Jerusalem [] The
etymology and meaning of the name are obscure. It appears to be a pre-Israelite
Canaanite name of the hill upon which Jerusalem was builtIn the Old Testament,
Zion is overwhelmingly a poetic and prophetic designation and is infrequently used
in
ordinary prose. It usually has emotional and religious overtones, but it is not clear
why the name Zion rather than the name Jerusalem should carry these overtones. The
religious and emotional qualities of the name arise from the importance of Jerusalem
as the royal city and the city of the Temple. Mount Zion is the place where Yahweh,
the God of Israel, dwells (Isaiah 8:18; Psalm 74:2), the place where he is king (Isaiah
24:23) and where he has installed his king, David (Psalm 2:6). It is thus the seat of the
action of Yahweh in history [] Zion came to mean the Jewish homeland, symbolic
of Judaism or Jewish national aspirations (whence the name Zionism for the 19th
20th-century movement to establish a Jewish national centre or state in Palestine)[]
Although the name of Zion is rare in the New Testament, it has been frequently used in
Christian literature and hymns as a designation for the heavenly city or for the
earthly city of Christian faith and fraternity. (Emphasis added). "Zion." (Encyclopdia
Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica 2008 Ultimate Reference Suite.
Chicago: Encyclopdia Britannica, 2008).

b. What does synagogue of the ear of corn refer to?

There are two parts here synagogue and ear of corn. Students will no doubt
know that the former refers to a Jewish place of worship but perhaps are unaware
that a synagogue may also serve as a centre for study and assembly. Broadly
speaking, then, it is a place where people who have something in common come
together. Ear of corn is one meaning of shibboleth, a Hebrew word also meaning
flood or stream. Shibboleth in turn refers to the password the Gileadites used to
differentiate their own people from fleeing Ephraimites: the latter could not
pronounce the sh- sound. As the Bible tells us: Then said they unto him, Say now
Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth; for he could not frame to pronounce it right.
Then they took him, and slew him at the passages of Jordan (Judges 12:6). In
modern times shibboleth has evolved to mean a platitude or a truism associated with
a particular group or sect. The Concise O.E.D. says: a long-standing formula,
doctrine, or phrase, etc., held to be true by a party or sect and traces it to Middle
English from the Hebrew word for ear of corn, used as a test of nationality for its
difficult pronunciation.

c. How should we interpret lines 7-8 and the reference to the synagogue of the ear

of corn (line 9)?

Two of the most challenging lines these. The Jewish connotations are clear (Zion,
synagogue, the shibboleth or ear of corn). Critics have focused on the further
connotations of periodicity and the life cycle (round, water bead), and commonality
or fraternity (synagogue, the shibboleth or ear of corn). Even though Thomas uses
a Judeo-Christian lexicon, the connotations are not exclusive to this tradition.
The ear of corn takes us to a pagan tradition of fertility and the round water bead
reminds us of the universal theme of rebirth. Through a culturally-specific
vocabulary, then, the speaker is referencing a theme rebirth, the life cycle
common to all belief systems. The adverbial phrase, And I must enter again
reinforces the theme of eternal recurrence in the face of death.
2

Least valley of sackcloth evokes the Earthly sorrows known Biblically as the valley
(or vale) of tears which one leaves behind upon death, and sackcloth is associated with
penitence, as in the phrase sackcloth and ashes, traditionally worn by Jews and early
Christians to express remorse.
Stations of the breath inevitably evokes the Christian Stations of the Cross or Via
Crucis, the fourteen stages in Christs Passion.
Overall, this is an excellent poem to illustrate how meaning is dependent on form; the
following is a long-ish quote from Lancashires online interpretation:
Extraordinary too is the stanzaic form of Refusal to Mourn: four rhyming stanzas,
abcabc, that is, eight identical abc triples, each of them consisting of a long line, a short
line, and a long line. In this metre, it seems to me at least, Thomas imitates the sea
tumbling in harness, the unmourning water, and the riding Thames. These
threelineabc units are two waves and a trough the crest of a wave, its trough or valley,
andthen another crest. The poem moves like the sea in its round (Earth-like) bead,
risingand falling with the tides, every day the same, every month the same. The music of
Refusal toMourn moves counterpoint to the heart-felt consolation that Thomas
speaks. Death isto life what a trough is to the crest of every wave in the tumbling sea.
http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/3357.html

Resources
http://www.dylanthomas.com/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/arts/sites/themes/books/dylan_thomas.shtml
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6B2c4b23r3k
http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/3357.html