AndDeathShallHaveNoDominion

by:DylanThomas

Anddeathshallhavenodominion.
Deadmennakedtheyshallbeone
Withthemaninthewindandthewestmoon;
Whentheirbonesarepickedcleanandthecleanbonesgone,
Theyshallhavestarsatelbowandfoot;
Thoughtheygomadtheyshallbesane,
Thoughtheysinkthroughtheseatheyshallriseagain;
Thoughloversbelostloveshallnot;
Anddeathshallhavenodominion.

Anddeathshallhavenodominion.
Underthewindingsofthesea
Theylyinglongshallnotdiewindily;
Twistingonrackswhensinewsgiveway,
Strappedtoawheel,yettheyshallnotbreak;
Faithintheirhandsshallsnapintwo,
Andtheunicornevilsrunthemthrough;
Splitallendsuptheyshan'tcrack;
Anddeathshallhavenodominion.

Anddeathshallhavenodominion.
Nomoremaygullscryattheirears
Orwavesbreakloudontheseashores;
Whereblewaflowermayaflowernomore
Liftitsheadtotheblowsoftherain;
Thoughtheybemadanddeadasnails,
Headsofthecharactershammerthroughdaisies;
Breakinthesuntillthesunbreaksdown,
Anddeathshallhavenodominion.

IN COUNTRY SLEEP

Never and never, my girl riding far and near

In the land of the hearthstone tales, and spelled asleep,
Fear or believe that the wolf in a sheepwhite hood
Loping and bleating roughly and blithely shall leap,
My dear, my dear,
Out of a lair in the flocked leaves in the dew dipped year
To eat your heart in the house in the rosy wood.

Sleep, good, for ever, slow and deep, spelled rare and wise,
My girl ranging the night in the rose and shire
Of the hobnail tales: no gooseherd or swine will turn
Into a homestall king or hamlet of fire
And prince of ice
To court the honeyed heart from your side before sunrise
In a spinney of ringed boys and ganders, spike and burn,

Nor the innocent lie in the rooting dingle wooed

And staved, and riven among plumes my rider weep.
From the broomed witch's spume you are shieldedby fern
And flower of country sleep and the greenwood keep.
Lie fast and soothed,
Safe be and smooth from the bellows of the rushy brood.
Never, my girl, until tolled to sleep by the stern

Bell believe or fear that the rustic shade or spell

Shall harrow and snow the blood while you ride wide and near,
For who unmanningly haunts the mountain ravened eaves
Or skulks in the dell moon but moonshine echoing clear
From the starred well?
A hill touches an angel. Out of a saint's cell
The nightbird lauds through nunneries and domes of leaves

Her robin breasted tree, three Marys in the rays.

Sanctum sanctorum the animal eye of the wood
In the rain telling its beads, and the gravest ghost
The owl at its knelling. Fox and holt kneel before blood.
Now the tales praise
The star rise at pasture and nightlong the fables graze
On the lord's-table of the bowing grass. Fear most

For ever of all not the wolf in his baaing hood

Nor the tusked prince, in the ruttish farm, at the rind
And mire of love, but the Thief as meek as the dew.
The country is holy: O bide in that country kind,
Know the green good,
Under the prayer wheeling moon in the rosy wood
Be shielded by chant and flower and gay may you

Lie in grace. Sleep spelled at rest in the lowly house

In the squirrel nimble grove, under linen and thatch
And star: held and blessed, though you scour the high four
Winds, from the dousing shade and the roarer at the latch,
Cool in your vows.
Yet out of the beaked, web dark and the pouncing boughs
Be you sure the Thief will seek a way sly and sure

And sly as snow and meek as dew blown to the thorn,

This night and each vast night until the stern bell talks
In the tower and tolls to sleep over the stalls
Of the hearthstone tales my own, lost love; and the soul walks
The waters shorn.
The night and each night since the falling star you were born,
Ever and ever he finds a way, as the snow falls,

As the rain falls, hail on the fleece, as the vale mist rides
Through the haygold stalls, as the dew falls on the wind-
Milled dust of the apple tree and the pounded islands
Of the morning leaves, as the star falls, as the winged
 Apple seed glides,
And falls, and flowers in the yawning wound at our sides,
As the world falls, silent as the cyclone of silence.

II

Night and the reindeer on the clouds above the haycocks

And the wings of the great roc ribboned for the fair!
The leaping saga of prayer! And high, there, on the hare-
Heeled winds the rooks
Cawing from their black bethels soaring, the holy books
Of birds! Among the cocks like fire the red fox

Burning! Night and the vein of birds in the winged, sloe wrist
Of the wood! Pastoral beat of blood through the laced leaves!
The stream from the priest black wristed spinney and sleeves
Of thistling frost
Of the nightingale's din and tale! The upgiven ghost
Of the dingle torn to singing and the surpliced

Hill of cypresses! The din and tale in the skimmed

Yard of the buttermilk rain on the pail! The sermon
Of blood! The bird loud vein! The saga from mermen
To seraphim
Leaping! The gospel rooks! All tell, this night, of him
Who comes as red as the fox and sly as the heeled wind.

Illumination of music! The lulled black-backed

Gull, on the wave with sand in its eyes! And the foal moves
Through the shaken greensward lake, silent, on the moonshod hooves,
In the winds' wakes.
Music of elements, that a miracles makes!
Earth, air, water, fire, singing into the white act,

The haygold haired, my love asleep, and the rift blue

Eyed, in the haloed house, in her rareness and hilly
High riding, held and blessed and true, and so stilly
Lying the sky
Might cross its planets, the bell weep, night gather her eyes,
The Thief fall on the dead like the willy nilly dew,

Only for the turning of the earth in her holy

Heart! Slyly, slowly, hearing the wound in her side go
Round the sun, he comes to my love like the designed snow,
And truly he
Flows to the strand of flowers like the dew's ruly sea,
And surely he sails like the ship shape clouds. Oh he

Comes designed to my love to steal not her tide raking

Wound, nor her riding high, nor her eyes, nor kindled hair,
But her faith that each vast night and the saga of prayer
He comes to take
Her faith that this last night for his unsacred sake
He comes to leave her in the lawless sun awaking
Naked and forsaken to grieve he will not come.
Ever and ever by all your vows believe and fear
My dear this night he comes and night without end my dear
Since you were born:
And you shall wake, from country sleep, this dawn and each first dawn,
Your faith as deathless as the outcry of the ruled sun. 1

I Fellowed Sleep

Dylan Thomas

I fellowed sleep who kissed me in the brain,

Let fall the tear of time; the sleeper's eye,
Shifting to light, turned on me like a moon.
So, planning-heeled, I flew along my man
And dropped on dreaming and the upward sky.

I fled the earth and, naked, climbed the weather,

Reaching a second ground far from the stars;
And there we wept I and a ghostly other,
My mothers-eyed, upon the tops of trees;
I fled that ground as lightly as a feather.

'My fathers' globe knocks on its nave and sings.'

'This that we tread was, too, your father's land.'
'But this we tread bears the angelic gangs
Sweet are their fathered faces in their wings.'
'These are but dreaming men. Breathe, and they fade.'

Faded my elbow ghost, the mothers-eyed,

As, blowing on the angels, I was lost
On that cloud coast to each grave-grabbing shade;
I blew the dreaming fellows to their bed
Where still they sleep unknowing of their ghost.

Then all the matter of the living air

Raised up a voice, and, climbing on the words,
I spelt my vision with a hand and hair,
How light the sleeping on this soily star,
How deep the waking in the worlded clouds.

There grows the hours' ladder to the sun,

Each rung a love or losing to the last,
The inches monkeyed by the blood of man.
And old, mad man still climbing in his ghost,
My fathers' ghost is climbing in the rain.
1
From Dylan Thomas: The Poems, published by J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd., London, 1971
Copyright 1937, 1945, 1955, 1956, 1962, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1971, 1977 The Trustees for the Copyrights of Dylan Thomas.
Biography

1914 October, 27 - Dylan Marlais Thomas born at 5 Cwmdonkin Drive, Uplands,

Swansea
1925 Enters the Swansea Grammar School
1926 Publishes his first poem: The Song Of The Mischievous Dog
1931 Leaves school and becomes junior reporter for The South Wales Daily Post
1932 Leaves The South Wales Daily Post and joins Swansea's Little Theatre
Company
1933 First poem published in the New English Weekly: And Death Shall Have No
Dominion

First visit to London, where he stays with his sister Nancy and visits editors
of literary magazines

First poem published in Poet's Corner of the Sunday Referee: That Sanity
Be Kept

Starts a correspondence with Pamela Hansford Johnson

1934 Second visit to London, where he stays with Pamela Hansford Johnson who
becomes a benefactor and a friend for life

Takes lodgings in London

Wins Book Prize of the Poet's Corner

December 18 - Publication of his first book: Eighteen Poems

1936 Meets Caitlin Macnamara at the Wheatsheaf Pub

September 10 - Publication of Twenty-Five Poems

1937 April 21 - First broadcast for BBC Radio: Life and the Modern Poet

July 11 - Marries Caitlin Macnamara

1938 August - Moves to Bay View, Laugharne

Participates in "The Modern Muse" with W.H.Auden for BBC Radio

1939 January 30 - Llewellyn Edouard (son) born

Publication of The Map of Love

 The World I Breathe published in the United States

1940 Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Dog published in Britain and the U.S.
1941 Dylan and Caitlin move back to London

Finds work as script-writer for films with the Strand Film Company

1943 March 3 - Aeronwy Bryn (daughter) born

1945 Awarded The Levinson Prize by Poetry Magazine
1946 Publication of Deaths And Entrances

Selected Writings Of Dylan Thomas published in the U.S.

1947 The Society of Authors awards a scholarship to visit Italy

Dylan and Caitlin travel to Italy; in Florence Dylan writes In Country Sleep

Dylan's new short story Return Journey broadcasted for BBC Radio

1948 Trip to Prague as a guest of the Czechoslovak writers union

Moves back to Wales, where they live in The Boat House, Laugharne

1949 July 24 - Colm Garan (son) born

1950 First lecture tour in the U.S.
1951 In Iran, writing a film script for the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company

Writes Lament, Poem On His Birthday, Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good
Night and the first part of Under Milk Wood

1952 Second lecture tour in the U.S.

Collected Poems published in Britain and the U.S.

1953 Publication of The Doctor And The Devils

Third lecture tour in the United States; first stage performance of Under
Milk Wood in New York

October 19 - last public engagement in New York

November 5 - Dylan collapses at the Chelsea Hotel

November 9 - Dylan dies at St Vincent's Hospital, New York

Bibliography

Eighteen Poems (1934)

Twenty-Five Poems (1936)

The Map of Love (1939)

The World I Breath (1939)

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog (1940)

New Poems (1943)

Deaths and Entrances (1946)

Selected Writings (1946)

Twenty-Six Poems (1950)

In Country Sleep (1952)

Collected Poems, 1934-1952 (1952)

The Doctor and the Devils (1953)

Quite Early One Morning (1954)

Under Milk Wood (1954)

A Prospect of the Sea (1955)

Adventures in the Skin Trade, and Other Stories (1955)

A Child's Christmas in Wales (1955)

Letters to Vernon Watkins (1957)

Miscellany One - Poems, Stories, Broadcasts (1963)

The Colour Of Saying (1963)

Selected Letters (1963)

The Beach of Fales (1964)

Miscellany Two (1966)

 Collected Prose (1969)

Dylan Thomas: Early Prose Writings (1971)

Dylan Thomas: The Poems (1971)

Miscellany Three - Poems, Stories (1978)

The Collected Stories (1983)

The Collected Letters (1985)

Dylan Marlais Thomas

(1914-1953)

hile Dylan Thomas possessed immense gifts and talent which made him a professional
success as a writer, he was often a disappointment on a personal level. Much of this
failure personally could have stemmed from an inability to deal with the extreme
demands that came with sudden fame. Some explanation must also lie in the various
ways his personality have been described: alternately as humble, shy, confused and
insecure on the inside, but outwardly neglectful, selfish, and egotistical--yet always, and
extremely, charming.

His older sister Nancy was eight years old when Dylan was born on the 27th of October,
1914 in Swansea in southern Wales. His mother, Florence Williams, was a housewife
and his father, David John Thomas (also known as "D.J." or "Jack"), was an English
Literature teacher at Swansea Grammar School. Both were from Welsh backgrounds,
surrounded by dozens of relatives in nearby towns and heavily influenced by religion
and tradition. D.J. was known as a strict schoolteacher but was supposedly unsatisfied
in this position since he believed his education and background warranted a higher place
in the academic world.

With his pretty blond curls and precocious manner, Dylan found he could get away with
many things, and so he took advantage of this. Because his mother thought of him as a
sickly child, he was soon conditioned to plead illness as a way of both garnering
attention and getting himself out of anything he considered unpleasant (such as school).

His father exposed him to poetry as early as the age of two, and by four Dylan was
reciting verses from Shakespeare. He was always fascinated by words, as he wrote
many years later to an American admirer:

The first poems I knew were nursery rhymes, and before I could read them for myself I had
come to love just the words of them, the words alone. What the words stood for, symbolised, or
meant was of very secondary importance--what mattered was the very sound of them as I heard
them for the first time on the lips of the remote and quite incomprehensible grown-ups who
seemed, for some reason, to be living in my world. And those words were, to me, as the notes of
bells, the sounds of musical instruments, the noises of wind, sea, and rain, the rattle of
milkcarts, the clapping of hooves on cobbles, the fingering of branches on a window pane, might
be to someone deaf from birth, who has miraculously found his hearing.

By the age of eight or nine he was writing his own poetry, even before he entered the
Grammar School in 1925. A quiet and introspective student, he was a frequent
contributor to the school's magazine.

He left school at sixteen and worked on the staff of the South Wales Daily Post (later the
South Wales Evening Post), sometimes writing scathing reviews and critiques of local
plays, concerts and writers which needed be edited to keep from offending the subjects
under scrutiny. During this very productive writing period of Dylan's life, he also
became known locally for the offbeat jokes, stories and obscene limericks he told in the
pubs at night. He would read poems he was working on aloud to friends and relatives,
not wanting them to read the work he'd done, but instead to hear it. Along with writing,
Thomas was also involved with local theater, both writing and acting.

In a January 1933 essay in the South Wales Evening Post entitled "Genius and Madness
Akin in the World of Art" Thomas discussed the idea that one gifted with genius often
walked a line where it was "difficult to differentiate, with any sureness, between
insanity and eccentricity." He asserted that "the borderline of insanity is more difficult
to trace than the majority of people, comparatively safe within the barriers of their own
common-sensibility, can realise."

Dylan's first national publication was in a small literary review in the spring of 1933.
Later that year his poems were published in the more prestigious Adelphi and the
London newspaper The Sunday Referee. Around this time he started corresponding with
a young woman named Pamela Hansford Johnson, who contacted him after reading
some of his work. Their letters back and forth made them feel quite close to each other
before they even met. When they finally did meet in London they spent a pleasant night
together drinking, listening to records and talking late into the night. Although he later
spent six weeks staying with her and her family in London, and there was talk of
marriage, the relationship eventually ended after two years when Johnson became fed
up with the thoughtless and unreliable side of Dylan Thomas.

Still, after moving to London in 1934 in pursuit of better opportunities, Dylan's writing
career continued to flourish. His poems, essays, articles and reviews were being
published in London and Swansea magazines and newspapers. Asserting one of his
dearest held beliefs, that the best poetry was music to the ears, he wrote in a 1934 poetry
review that:
Too much poetry to-day is flat on the page, a black and white thing of words created by
intelligences that no longer think it necessary for a poem to be read and understood by anything
but eyes.

His hard work in pursuing publishers paid off when his first book, 18 Poems was
released on the 18th of December 1934. The work received rave reviews, one critic even
calling it "one of the most remarkable books of poetry which have appeared for several
years." A second book Twenty-five Poems was to appear in Autumn of 1936, around the
time that he and his future wife began living their lives together.

Her name was Caitlin Macnamara and they had met in the Spring of 1936 in the London
pub The Wheatsheaf. Her previous experiences with men had her believing that "all
men were bastards," yet from the moment she met him she felt Dylan was somehow
different. Within hours of their first meeting Dylan, his head in her lap, kept drunkenly
insisting that she was the most beautiful woman he had ever met and that he was going
to marry her--to which she offered no objections. The slightly older Caitlin, a physically
strong, trained dancer with a fiery and unpredictable temper found the impoverished
poet vulnerable and sweet, if a bit needy. They spent the next five days and nights
together, going from pub to pub and hardly eating at all. Later that summer when he and
Caitlin met again in Wales, Dylan had a run-in with Augustus John, a painter and friend
of her parents with whom Caitlin had been having an affair. Caitlin and Dylan
eventually started living together near the end of 1936.

In April of 1937 Thomas recorded his first broadcast for BBC Wales, "Life And The
Modern Poet". Radio broadcasting was eventually to play a major role in his career
development. Soon, though he and Caitlin had no formal engagement and his parents
were against the idea, Dylan bought two very cheap imitation silver rings, made
arrangements, and was married to Caitlin on the July 11, 1937 in a simple ceremony. In
May 1938 the Thomases moved to Laugharne in Wales, a tiny, somewhat eccentric
waterside town that seemed perfect for the couple. Indeed, Caitlin has described the
years living at "Sea View" in Laugharne as their only really happy time. In the early
years of their marriage the pair was inseparable, Caitlin described their relationship as
that of "twin souls".

By now Thomas had developed a fairly regular daily routine: sleep in in the morning,
wake and get lunch (if there was enough money), then writing in the afternoons. The
couple's first child, Llewelyn Edouard, was born on January 30, 1939. Meanwhile,
Thomas continued to occasionally record for the BBC, review books, write, and publish
his own work, including getting published in the United States. His next book The Map
of Love, a collection of poems and short stories, was printed in 1939. However, the
outbreak of war was soon to overshadow everything.

The Map of Love, published the month before war was declared on 3 September 1939 and
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog (autobiographical stories) released in 1940 were
both commercial failures due to flagging of the literary industry during the war years.
Paper was rationed, and people generally had more hunger for news than to spend what
earnings they had on literature and poetry. Many publishing houses and literary
magazines shut down either temporarily or permanently.
Faced with either finding writer's work or conscription, this was the time when Dylan
Thomas began his work writing and reading for radio in earnest. As for wanting to
avoid being drafted into the armed forces, it may have not been so much cowardice on
Thomas' part (though certainly he exhibited some) as a complete lack of any patriotic or
political interest or emotion. Thomas found the idea of war ridiculous and knew he
could never bring himself to kill another man.

The night before he was to face his conscription tribunal, he attempted to sway things in
his favor by drinking so heavily that the next day he was sweating, shaking, pale and
covered in blotches. He was given an exemption on medical grounds, but his biggest
mistake was to boast of "getting away" with this. Around tiny Laugharne, families had
been watching their sons, brothers, fathers and husbands march off to war and die for
their country. Such remarks made Thomas quite an unpopular man and he and Caitlin
eventually left Laugharne.

The couple spent some time in the summer of 1940 on an estate in southern England
where artists and writers were gathered. An incident where Caitlin was almost unfaithful
to Dylan led to violent, physical and tearful fights. He could not get over the idea that
she could have been unfaithful to him... and the trust between them was gone. Now they
started to spend days and often weeks apart from each other.

By 1941 Thomas had found regular work writing scripts for wartime documentaries and
occasionally performing on radio. The couple's second child, daughter Aeronwy Bryn,
was born in 1943, giving Caitlin something to focus on besides her faltering marriage.
Meanwhile, the couple moved around often--sometimes together and sometimes
separately. The bombings in London and Swansea were unnerving, and in late 1944 the
couple moved into a bungalow in New Quay in Wales. Their residence here came to an
end after a now infamous incident in 1945 where an unstable and agitated ex-
commando neighbor fired twenty rounds into the bungalow and then threatened to blow
Thomas and his visiting friends up with a hand grenade. The man was charged with
attempted murder and the Thomases moved away when the case came to trial.

It was during this period in Wales, however, when Dylan Thomas produced many of the
poems that were to establish his place among the ranks of great poets. They were poems
that often reflected on the fantasy-days of childhood lost: Poem In October, 'In my craft or
sullen art', The Conversation of Prayers, and Fern Hill. When these works and others were
released in the 1946 collection Deaths and Entrances, Dylan's popularity exploded. He
was hailed as a genius and a great poet. Back in London, he continued to work for the
BBC, becoming as well known for his radio work as for his poetry. However, even
though he craved affection and attention, Thomas found this world-wide fame
overwhelming. The more famous he became, the more he would withdraw--perhaps in
an attempt to keep his private, inner world his own.
Near the end of 1945, the Thomases began living largely off the generosity of Mrs.
Margaret Taylor, a wealthy benefactress who was a fan of Thomas. Taylor's patronage,
however, did little to help her marriage, which eventually ended after the strain her
relationship to the Thomases created between her and her husband. From 1945 to 1947
Dylan and Caitlin lived in Oxford. Llewelyn, who had been staying with Caitlin's family
since 1941, now came to live with his parents again.

April 1947 brought Thomas' first trip abroad as he spent several months in Italy with his
family. Thomas found he didn't enjoy travelling too much, and would spend his time
indoors listening to cricket on the radio while everyone else went sightseeing or off to
the beach. While there he also composed the poem In Country Heaven. Later in 1947
Taylor bought the family a house in South Leigh. However when they learned six
months later that The Boat House in Laugharne was available, she managed to sell the
South Leigh house to purchase The Boat House for them. In 1949 the Thomases, Caitlin
now seven months pregnant, moved back to Laugharne--to the whitewashed house
overlooking the tidal waters of the River Taf.

Back in Wales and back in Laugharne, Thomas easily fell into his old routines. He used
the shed along the road from the Boat House to the village as his place of work, again
writing mostly in the afternoons. His parents had moved to a house across from
Laugharne's Brown Hotel. At night his mother would keep watch behind her lace
curtains to see if Dylan fell over on his drunken way down the steps of the hotel. When
he drank into the small hours of the morning he would tip-toe home, carrying his shoes
so as not to wake the neighbors. Yet sometimes they would awaken--only to peer out
their windows and see an inebriated man relieving himself on the town's prized cherry
trees. Though their third child, son Colm Garan Hart was born in July of 1949, tension
between the Caitlin and Dylan was as high as ever. Money was still tight, so when a
generous offer arrived from the United States, a country which Thomas had desired to
visit for years, it was readily accepted.

John Malcolm Brinnin, director of the Young Men's and Young Women's Hebrew
Association in New York City had written asking Thomas to lecture and read at the
Association's Poetry Centre. So on February 21, 1950 the wild Welsh poet arrived in
America. Thomas did not hesitate to comment on his new experiences in this country
whose lifestyle and culture was quite different to his own. He described skyscrapers as
"phallic towers" and said he found it strange that in the U.S. "everybody uses the
telephone all the time". In a letter home he observed:

There seems, at first, to be no reality at all in the life here: it is all an enormous faade of speed
and efficiency & power behind which millions of little individuals are wrestling, in vain, with their
own anxieties.

At various times America seemed to both overwhelm and amuse Thomas.

Over the next three months he traveled coast-to-coast, in New York and California,
giving readings at over forty universities, schools and colleges. After a night on stage he
would relax by drinking, singing songs and telling his ribald jokes and stories before
stumbling off to any bed he could find. Most of the American literati were disappointed
by Thomas' behavior off-stage, as they did not find his brand of humor nor his constant
use of four-letter words appealing. Thomas, however, couldn't have cared less. Despite
his ability to mesmerize and enchant audiences at readings, this was also a man who
afterwards once made a lewd comment that he would like to suckle her breasts to one
undergraduate, and another time horrified the group he was with by "not quite making it
to the bathroom".

Two incidents during one week in California further demonstrate Dylan's sometimes
complete lack of tact or social grace. The first took place at dinner where Thomas was
introduced to the actress Shelley Winters. When she asked him why he had come to
Hollywood, his reply was "To touch the titties of a beautiful blonde starlet and to meet
Charlie Chaplin." Later that evening when Winters granted his first wish, he proclaimed
"I do not believe it's necessary for me to meet Charlie Chaplin now". Yet he did meet
Chaplin soon after, arriving quite drunk at the residence after a meal enjoyed with
Winters, Marilyn Monroe and several martinis and bottles of beer and wine. Upon
arrival, Thomas crashed the car they were in into the net of Chaplin's tennis court.
Inside, though there were several notable Hollywood figures there that night, Thomas
insisted he was only interested in meeting Chaplin. After later being rebuked for "rude,
drunken behavior" by Chaplin himself, Dylan promptly walked out into the solarium
and relieved himself on a large plant.

It was while on this first tour that Thomas apparently engaged in a serious affair with an
American woman whom he later met up with in London. After hearing about this and
being told that Dylan and the woman were seen together in London pubs where she was
well known, Caitlin felt humiliated and was suspicious and mistrustful of her husband
for the rest of their time together. Any trust that had been left was now gone. Their
fights became more frequent and more violent.

Caitlin accompanied him on his second U.S. tour from January to May 1952, though the
travelling was stressful and she found that she did not like America very much. In
November his Collected Poems were published and hailed as a major literary
achievement. The book was awarded the William Foyle Poetry Prize in 1952 and the
Etna-Taormina International Prize later in 1953. Yet just as his fame was growing even
greater, Thomas had to deal with personal tragedy. His close relationship with his father
had continued after moving back to Laugharne, with daily visits to discuss his work and
relax by doing crossword puzzles and talking. The ailing D.J. Thomas died on
December 16, 1952 at the age of 76, with his son holding his hand. As per his wishes,
his body was cremated, though this too turned out to be a traumatic experience for
Dylan. He was told that his father's head had exploded in the oven and he ended up
becoming violently ill when the wind shifted and started blowing the oven's smoke in
his direction. He asked his wife to ensure that "nothing like that ever happens to me".

The strong emotions he experienced during the long illness and then at the death of his
father helped Thomas produce two of his most well-known poems: Do Not Go Gentle Into
That Good Night and the unfinished Elegy. Tragedy struck again just before his third U.S.
tour when Dylan's sister Nancy died in Bombay. Now Dylan was all his mother had left
of their family, and even this was not to last long.

From April to June of 1953 he spent six weeks in the U.S. promoting the American
publication of Collected Poems. While there, his unfinished play Under Milk Wood, a
project which he had been constructing on and off for thirteen years, was staged in its
world premiere on the 3rd of May at Harvard's Fogg Museum. The play's original
working title had been "The Town That Was Mad"--the town being largely based upon
Laugharne. For years Thomas had been spotted at the pub quickly jotting something
down on any scrap of paper he could find. The locals dismissed it as one of the writer's
quirks, little suspecting that over time he was collecting material for his play. Thomas
wanted to capture the particular way they spoke, the intonation and the rhythms.

In 1953 Thomas began making several television appearances, even further boosting his
celebrity. He was also featured in a rather unflattering article in Time magazine in which
the journalist wrote:

When he settles down to guzzle beer, which is most of the time, his incredible yarns tumble over
each other in a wild Welsh dithyramb in which truth and fact become hopelessly smothered in
boozy invention. He borrows with no thought of returning what is lent, seldom shows up on time,
is a trial to his friends, and a worry to his family.

Regardless of the reputation Dylan Thomas had gained, the article was full of gross
exaggeration and the poet began proceedings to sue the magazine for libel. In return,
Time hired a private detective to follow Thomas on his fourth U.S. Tour in late 1953--
which is perhaps one of the only reasons we know some details about the final days of
Dylan Thomas' life.

During his fourth visit to the United States, Dylan planned on staying and working in
New York for several weeks, then travelling on to California to work on a major project
writing the libretto of an opera for which Igor Stranvinsky would write the score. He
would stay for an extended length of time and informed Caitlin that he would send for
her as soon as he had enough money, which of course made her livid. When he boarded
the plane on October 19, 1953, she believed that the marriage was over.

While he worked on rehearsals of Under Milk Wood in the weeks after arriving in New
York, he often complained of being tired and spent much of the time resting in his hotel.
He would get sick and vomit when drinking. On November 3, Thomas signed a contract
for future lecture tours that would bring him $1,000 a week and should have brought an
end to his financial problems.

Much speculation has been and is still made about the events of the next several days.
Thomas had been receiving cortisone injections as treatment for his illness and tiredness
while in New York, though they were not wholly successful in alleviating the problems.
On November 4, after being up until 4 or 5 a.m. the night before, he was given another
cortisone shot, after which he kept vomiting and began to seem delirious. The doctor
was summoned again later in the day, and Thomas asked to be "put out". He was
apparently given half-a-grain of morphine--which doctors now confirm was
approximately three times the appropriate does and would cause anyone to be violently
ill. Some have also speculated that Thomas had been using certain drugs like sleeping
and "pep" pills, which may have contributed to his condition. At 2:30 a.m. on November
5 an ambulance was summoned to take him to St. Vincent's Hospital. Thomas had fallen
into a coma.

Earlier that year during his third U.S. tour, Thomas started an affair with Liz Reitell,
Brinnin's assistant. It was she who had summon the doctor and called for the
ambulance. She now held a beside vigil at the hospital until Caitlin arrived on
November 8th. Dylan Thomas died at 12:40 p.m. on November 9, 1953 while a nurse
was bathing his body. The only other person in the room at the time was the poet John
Berryman. A memorial service held in New York soon after was attended by notable
writers such as Tennessee Williams, e. e. cummings and William Faulkner. The
distraught Caitlin accompanied his body back to Wales on the S.S. United States and he
was buried in a churchyard in Laugharne on November 24.

There are many things said and written about Dylan Thomas, and it is difficult to know
what is really true and what is not. There is perhaps some small grain of truth found in
each story or assessment. Though he was witty, charming, and a great writer and
performer, he was at the same time insecure, neglectful and irresponsible. Thanks to his
talents with the spoken and written word, however, his works are sure outlive his
reputation.