Richard Burton reads 'Elegy' (for his father) by Dylan Thomas

This poem was left unfinished at Dylan Thomas' death. The first seventeen lines were untouched, but the rest was reconstructed/edited from Thomas' manuscript by his friend Vernon Watkins.

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 light 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.)

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Richard
• Burton
• Dylan
• Thomas
• Poem
• Elegy
• (for
• his
• father)

[gwizdawka]

Excellent! Two great men from Wales. Long live Wales!

[ianskidmore]

These later readings are the best of Burton- and that is saying something. We shall never hear his like again

[coracleman]

richard burton was not a racist end of.

coraclewoman

[manthasagittarius]

If you're going to go at it that way, RichardElden, no one has the right to read or do or say anything at all. Outside of that -- if you say the reader of this reading is talentless, either you aren't listening or you can't listen, with your other preoccupations.

[dylan618]

"Too proud to cry, too frail to check the tears" -- perhaps the best line of the poem!

[krofan]

@RichardElden I don't think he was a apartheid supporter because he had much "black" friends. People like Sammy Davis Jr.

And Richard very nice discribed what family meens to him in one of his interviews.

[krofan]

@RichardElden I don't believe he did, if you watch his interview with Dick Cavett he talks about his father. And I don't see the lightest hate were you are talking about, i think it's the opposite.

[renevega2]

Hauntingly beautiful.

[MyLordPariah]

@JuanMacready :D hahahahaha I see you really liked the fellow MUWAH. 

[JuanMacready]

@MyLordPariah The talentless racist cunt smoked 100 cigarettes a day.