Elegy

by Dylan Thomas

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 liught 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.)