Poetry is a sensitive type of art. Poetry is something more than just lyric words, it is something which impossible to describe by words and it may be just felt. Poetry is not a combination of words; it is a combination of symbols, feelings, and emotions. People describe their feelings, the most important and emotional ideas through poetry. It is impossible to retell the poetic work of any author as it is not a mind description but a fly of the heart.
Our task is to compare and contrast the poetry of Robert Frost with that of Dylan Thomas in terms of their themes, style, and use of imagistic elements. It is impossible to talk about poets’ works without following their biographies as all the emotions which appear in their lives, of no importance whether they are good or bad, influence the poets’ writings. The periods when the poets created are also very important as the works mostly depend on the time and era when they live.
Robert Lee Frost is an American writer who was born on March 26, 1874, in San Francisco. He began to write poems when he was a student. He came to England with his wife in 1912. And in 1913, he placed his first book of poems A Boy’s Will in a small London edition. When England entered the First World War, in 1915, he had to return to America. He continued to write and describe to the interviews the aim of his writings. (Pritchard)
The themes of Frost’s poems may divide his creations into several parts. First, he wrote “poems about the hard work, difficulty, and uncertainty of country life” (Poetic Modes in the Late 19th and Early 20th Century), he showed a dramatic or even sympathetic attitude to his New England character. He was against the social and political reforms that he depicted in his poems. The other period is when he became “expert at composing poems that had affinities with light verse and that consisted of a pointed, witty treatment of issues and ideas” (Pritchard).
Frost’s poems are telling us about his attitude to life, his country, and people. He is looking for some universal themes which could be interesting to everybody and very often he turned to rural life in his works. The works of the poet became more occasional, relaxation after the Second World War. At the end of 1962, the poet was sent for a prostate operation, during which he suffered a severe heart attack, and in the process of treatment, he died of a series of embolisms. Robert Lee Frost died on January 29, 1963. (Pritchard)
Dylan Thomas was born in 1941 in South Wales, his parents were Welsh. Thomas was happy during his childhood; he was full of life, dreamy, and with a vivid imagination. He was not good in all subjects except English. He became an editor of a school magazine and during that time he wrote his first poem. Thomas’ poems are like the reflection of his childhood dreams and emotions. His first book with poems was published in 1913. The poems of Thomas depict the author’s problems, battles, and victories. His works are a search for truth in philosophy and religion. (Hardy 2001)
Barbara Nathan Hardy writes that “Dylan Thomas manages to express the ineffable feeling, or the feeling of ineffability, of the experience of the ecstasy, in an unromantic and individualizing way which combines the language of the natural sublime with a plausible matter-of-factness, a controlled bathos, “the size of… building,” and colloquial crudeness, “bloody… bloody.” (2001)
The author gives the reader a romantic atmosphere and a vivid description of his feelings. He created his poems for people, he wanted them to understand what he was writing about, so he was looking for some universal topics, themes that were familiar to everybody and which could be understood by everybody.
The lives of both these poets are similar in some ways. They both lived almost in one period, they both spared their lives in England and America (Thomas also visited America and lived there for some time). They wanted their poetry to be understandable to people. They wrote about things that were common for everybody, they tried to depict universal topics and fill them with their emotional experience.
To compare and contrast the terms of their themes, style, and use of imagistic elements we should analyze one of the rhymes of each poet. I have chosen the poem “Fire and Ice” by Robert Frost and “A Refusal to Mourn the Death, By Fire, Of a Child in London” by Dylan Thomas.
The poem “Fire and Ice” by Robert Frost is a small description of the end of the world. The opening lines are,
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice (Frost).
The words “fire” and “ice” are associated with the “desire” and “hate”, about what the author writes lower,
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great (Frost).
The author tells us about two notions the power of which can destroy the whole world. Frost gives his own attitude to these notions but does not say what exactly he prefers, what he feels better to die of. He knew what desire (fire) was and at the same time, he understood people who felt hate (ice) in their hearts. It is impossible to interpret what feeling is stronger as it is impossible to control people’s emotions, especially when the feelings are fresh and painful.
Frost shows his attitude to the people’s emotions in this poem; he wants to give readers the vision of what can happen if people do not control their emotions, as he knows that the power, produced by emotions, is rather destroying.
“A Refusal to Mourn the Death, By Fire, Of a Child in London” by Dylan Thomas may be interpreted in several different ways. The poem starts with a very strong and emphatic “Never” which tunes the reader on a very serious tone. The poem is about the circle of death and birth,
And I must enter again the round
Zion of the water bead
And the synagogue of the ear of corn (Thomas)
The author tells us that there is no end: people are born, they die and after the death, they come again on the earth,
Fathering and all humbling darkness (Thomas)
Death is described as something positive here. Death symbolizes the reproduction of life “mankind making” (Thomas). It is impossible the birth without death, it is two interconnected notions. So, the author tells that people should not mourn the death of people, as it is an uninterrupted process on the earth.
The poem may be divided into four parts. In the first part the death is associated with the “return to nature, a meeting with basic elements which implies the end of self-identity, the loss of individuality and complete integration with the elements” (Cabral).
The second part of the poem describes death as the end, the end of the whole world. The author gives the reader names of biblical cities to underline his idea about the end of life on the planet. According to this part, “the poem seems to take death as a sacred reality, endowing it with an aura of untouchable ‘sacralization’” (Cabral).
I absolutely agree with the idea that the last line should be interpreted in the way that “Thomas is emphasizing the re-absorption into the elements of nature as an alternative to the reality of death” (Cabral).
After the first death, there is no other (Thomas).
Death is only one and we should not mourn about it, moreover, it is a natural thing, it should be so.
Death is one of the main themes of Dylan Thomas in his poems and prose.
So, we analyzed the poems of these two writers and now we may come to the comparing and contrast process of them. First of all, I would like to say that the themes of both poems are rather common. The description is about the world, about the process of death. Frost describes two main reasons, from his point of view, why mankind may disappear. Thomas in his turn describes the nature of death, why can it happen and what is the purpose of death.
The depicting elements also have some differences. Thomas makes a connection with the Bible, his words are rather serious and strong, I would even say they are rather categorical (“never”, “until’ and others). His poem is rather dark and very hard to perceive. Frost uses more simple words, he tries to explain with common words the notions. His poem is also rather symbolic but there is no that categorical effect which Thomas produces.
The language of these two authors is rather different and at the same time similar. Frost uses similes and metaphors to produce his poem. Thomas does almost the same, the poem “A Refusal to Mourn the Death, By Fire, Of a Child in London” by Dylan Thomas is full of religious notions, “beast”, “Zion”, “grave”, “pray”, “salt”, which “eco the Biblical mythology” (Cabral). The words in Frost’s poem are more occasional, more common. Frost gives the common interpretation of the end of the world; Thomas wants to refer to the end of the world to the Bible.
So, both authors lived during the same period, in the same countries, and created on the same topics (not always, but still). The two poems of these authors, which we analyzed, showed us some common features and differences in the themes of the poems, in their language, and types of imaginary. To speak about my attitude to the authors, I would say that I like more the works of Robert frost, but do not show that the poems of Dylan Thomas do not deserve people’s attention.
Works Cited
Cabral, Gladir da Silva. “Death in Dylan Thomas’s poem “A Refusal to Mourn the Death, By Fire, Of a Child in London” and its relation to the Christian tradition”. Web.
Ferris, Paul. Dylan Thomas: the biography. Basic Books, 2000.
Frost, Robert. “Fire and Ice”, 2009. Web.
Hardy, Barbara Nathan. Dylan Thomas: an original language. University of Georgia Press, 2000.
“Poetic Modes in the Late 19th and Early 20th Century”. 2009. Web.
Pritchard, William H. “Frost’s Life and Career”. 2009. Web.
Tedlock, E. W., ed. Dylan Thomas: The Legend and the Poet: A Collection of Biographical and Critical Essays. London: Heinemann, 2001
Thomas, Dylan. “A Refusal To Mourn The Death, By Fire, Of A Child In London”, 2009. Web.