“A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London”- Dylan Thomas’ “non-elegy” as elegy

To highlight his “refusal to mourn,” Thomas refuses traditional elegiac form. The a,b,c,a,b,c rhyme scheme within each sestet does not lend itself to song as do traditional schemes used in elegies. This song-like quality distinguishes poetry from other forms of literature as cathartic. For the elegy, this catharsis is expressed as mourning.  In terms of structure, then, this poem is decidedly not an elegy and according to the title, the subject of the poem is not mourning. However, the enjambment used in  “With any Further” leading to “Elegy” in the following line suggests the Thomas intended this poem as an elegy (989).  Further, the lack of punctuation until “child’s death.” and the shift in structure that follows indicates that this death affected the subject in some way. His refusal to mourn, then, is not because he is unaffected, but rather, because his mourning exceeds the scope of a single death in a single incident. This interpretation is validated in the final line of the poem; “after the first death, there is no other,” that is, the mourning we experience at the death of a child cannot be surpassed, even by the death of a second child. By breaking expectations of form and content, Thomas presses open the readers understanding of what is at stake when we mourn the loss of “innocence and youth.” (989)