Elegy
Too
proud
to
die;
broken
and
blind
he
died
The
darkest
way,
and
did
not
turn
away,
A
cold
kind
man
brave
in
his
narrow
pride
On
that
darkest
day,
Oh,
forever
may
He
lie
lightly,
at
last,
on
the
last,
crossed
Hill,
under
the
grass,
in
love,
and
there
grow
Young
among
the
long
flocks,
and
never
lie
lost
Or
still
all
the
numberless
days
of
his
death,
though
Above
all
he
longed
for
his
mother's
breast
Which
was
rest
and
dust,
and
in
the
kind
ground
The
darkest
justice
of
death,
blind
and
unblessed.
Let
him
find
no
rest
but
be
fathered
and
found,
I
prayed
in
the
crouching
room,
by
his
blind
bed,
In
the
muted
house,
one
minute
before
Noon,
and
night,
and
light.
the
rivers
of
the
dead
Veined
his
poor
hand
I
held,
and
I
saw
Through
his
unseeing
eyes
to
the
roots
of
the
sea.
(An
old
tormented
man
three-quarters
blind,
I
am
not
too
proud
to
cry
that
He
and
he
Will
never
never
go
out
of
my
mind.
All
his
bones
crying,
and
poor
in
all
but
pain,
Being
innocent,
he
dreaded
that
he
died
Hating
his
God,
but
what
he
was
was
plain:
An
old
kind
man
brave
in
his
burning
pride.
The
sticks
of
the
house
were
his;
his
books
he
owned.
Even
as
a
baby
he
had
never
cried;
Nor
did
he
now,
save
to
his
secret
wound.
Out
of
his
eyes
I
saw
the
last
light
glide.
Here
among
the
light
of
the
lording
sky
An
old
man
is
with
me
where
I
go
Walking
in
the
meadows
of
his
son's
eye
On
whom
a
world
of
ills
came
down
like
snow.
He
cried
as
he
died,
fearing
at
last
the
spheres'
Last
sound,
the
world
going
out
without
a
breath:
Too
proud
to
cry,
too
frail
to
check
the
tears,
And
caught
between
two
nights,
blindness
and
death.
O
deepest
wound
of
all
that
he
should
die
On
that
darkest
day.
oh,
he
could
hide
The
tears
out
of
his
eyes,
too
proud
to
cry.
Until
I
die
he
will
not
leave
my
side.)
Dylan Thomas
Dylan Thomas (born October 27, 1914, Swansea, Glamorgan [now in Swansea], Wales—died November 9, 1953, New York, New York, U.S.) Welsh poet and prose writer whose work is known for its comic exuberance, rhapsodic lilt, and pathos. His personal life, punctuated by reckless bouts of drinking, was notorious. Thomas spent his childhood in southwestern Wales. His father taught English at the Swansea grammar school, which in due course the boy attended. Because Dylan’s mother was a farmer’s daughter, he had a country home he could go to when on holiday. His poem “Fern Hill” (1946) describes its joys.