Arthur Hughes, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Horatius! Had forgotten about that stirring epic poem. Good to see
it getting an airing.
I read this extract from ‘The Prophet’ by Kahil Gibran in my speech at my daughter’s wedding.
‘And a woman who held a babe against her breast said,
Speak to us of Children
And he said:
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing
for itself.
They come through you but not from you.
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
for they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of to-morrow.
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You my strive to be like them, but seek not to make them
like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living
arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
And He bends you with His might that His arrows may go
swift and far.
Let your bending in the Archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also
the bow that is stable.’
I thank God that none of my four have yet fallen to Earth.
This is perhaps the most well known of Dylan Thomas’s work.. I know it struck me forcefully when I first read it about the age of fourteen and it sealed my love of his poetry.
Do Not Go Gentle into That Goodnight
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Gillygangle 2025
