Tuesday, January 27, 2015
A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London
The poem begins with an apocalyptic stanza and ends in what seems to be a display of ultimate human compassion. Thomas is undoubtedly meddling with his carefully selected words' meanings. Central themes are mankind, time, nature, and death. A line that troubles me is "Shall I let pray the shadow of a sound." The only example of a sound having a shadow I can envision is when sound agitates water and light is shining through it, which may relate somehow to the apocalyptic water theme of the first stanza. I'm also not certain what he is getting at by referring to a "salt seed." My favorite line of the poem is "Robed in the long friends." It seems relevant that he depicts the Thames as "riding" and the end of the world happening with "the sea tumbling in harness."
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Water is the embodiment of "unmourning." First mentioned as the "sea tumbling" it is a repeated image of self-healing, it accomplishes what the speaker cannot. Water must constantly part with itself, with the family of cloud or ocean it comes from, but in the end returns. The water bead is held akin to Zion. It does not know death, it is "unmourning."
ReplyDeleteWater is equally a feminine image in literature. By forging the elegy out of water the speaker has become a Pygmalion of sorts. He makes her into something more elemental than the fragility of the human body.