‘Twelve Songs’ contains four stanzas each stanza is based on one certain topic. The first stanza talks about domestic things “Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone”. The second is more public” Let aero planes circle overhead”. The third Stanza is more personal “He was my North my South my East and West” and the fourth Stanza talks about the universe “Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun” W.H.Auden leaves his personal views till last. ‘Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night’ talks about different men in each stanza, “wise men”, “wild men,” “grave men” and finally in the last stanza he talks about his father, so like Auden he leaves his personal views until last. Each man that Dylan Thomas talks about he refers to death and their life. Dylan Thomas takes a group of different sorts of men and talks about how their lives have not been lived to the full and they have not put up a fight about death and dying so therefore have just died, such as in Stanza two Dylan Thomas is talking about wise men, he says ‘their words have forked no lightning’ he is saying that no matter how wise they are, what ever they say does not have an impact on the world and they may be wise but it has done no good, and now they are dead and they have made no impact on the world. In Stanza six when Dylan Thomas talks to his father, he tells him not to die, And if he is to die, he must not die like the other men that he talks about, he must put up a fight and face death. He begs his father not to die ‘I pray do not go gentle into that good night.’ In both of these poems they have held back their personal grief, and have written about them at the end of the poem. The poets have restricted their discussion of personal grief to a brief part of each of the poem. Leaving the best until last.
‘Twelve Songs’ and ‘Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night’ are very different. ‘Twelve Songs’ talks about after death whereas ‘Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night’ talks about life before death and putting up a fight before dying. ‘Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night’ does not talk about grief that much, it talks more about wasting your life and talking about people who have died and have made no impact on the world and he is saying to his father that he must not be like these people, he must make an impact. ‘Twelve Songs’ does not state the topic of grief he expresses it by telling people what to do, but grief is spoken about, not directly, but more than Dylan Thomas. Dylan Thomas uses metaphors of day/night and life/death. He refers to death as night ‘Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night’ he is saying do not die. ‘Twelve Songs’ does not use metaphors it just states the subject. Not only what is written in each poem is different but also the language and ways of writing are different. ‘Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night’ does not flow as easily as ‘Twelve Songs.’ Although there is a distinctive pattern throughout ‘Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night’ of “ABA”, the first and the last line rhyme and the middle line of each stanza all rhyme, ‘day’, ‘bay’, ‘way’ and ‘pray’. Twelve Songs does not have this continuous rhyming pattern. There are four lines in each stanza and all of them rhyme as in the first two lines rhyme and the last two lines of each stanza rhyme. In the first stanza the first two end ‘telephone’ and ‘bone’ and the last two end ‘drum’ and ‘come’. This happens throughout the whole poem. This rhyming pattern helps the poem run smoothly and works very well. ‘Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night’ repeats lines throughout the whole poem whereas ‘Twelve Songs’ does not repeat at any point in the poem. Both of these methods work well. The fact that ‘Twelve Songs’ is a list of instructions means that if there were repeats like in ‘Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night’ the poem would not work as well. And in Dylan Thomas’s if the lines were not repeated it would not run at all as the repeating pattern held the poem together and gave it a structure. The main difference between the two poems is ‘Twelve Songs’ talks about after death and grief and how it feels to loose a loved one. And ‘Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night’ talks about before someone dies and about not dieing.
The Theme of grief runs throughout both poems but both poets use the themes in very different ways. The fact that ‘Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night’ is not talking about someone who is dead you an already see that the use of the theme will be different because ‘Twelve Songs’ is talking about someone who is dead. ‘Twelve Songs’ is a deeper meaning of grief because it is talking about someone who is dead; this makes it have more of a theme of grief running through it rather than death. ‘Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night’ uses the theme of death more rather than death. This is because it is about someone who is going to die so therefore the son is not grieving he is praying to his father not to die rather than being sad about him being dead. The tone of these poems is similar in the sense they both use instructions but overall the tone is very different in both of the poems. ‘Twelve Songs’ is more of a forceful tone because it states the instructions in a list, and it feels more of an aggressive poem. ‘Do Not Go Into That Good Night’ Is a begging tone, the son is begging his father not to die, it is not such an aggressive tone, it is more of a calmer tone. The second stanza in ‘Twelve Songs’ talks about the public ‘Let aeroplanes circle over head.’ and ‘the traffic policeman.’ and finally ‘public doves’ he uses public ideas to tell the public he is in mourning and also to help other people who are mourning how to cope with death and grieving. ‘Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night’ also talks about public but not as strongly as ‘Twelve Songs.’ The son talks about other men and how their lives have not made an impact on the world, but the poem does not have public expressions.
‘Twelve Songs is split in to different subjects, one subject for each stanza. The fourth stanza talks about the universe ‘stars’,’ sun’, and ‘moon’. W.H.Auden uses these to show not even the universe is needed now that his love has gone. Each Stanza gets bigger and bigger telling us what he now does not need that his love has gone. This really makes you the reader understand how much pain he is going through and how helpless he feels. When he talks about the sun, moon and stars he talks about them as though they are nothing important and you can just get rid of them just like that. He talks about them as just being objects you can pack up and get rid of when you do not want them. ‘Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night’ uses physical aspects; ‘lightning’, ‘bay’,’ meteors’. Dylan Thomas uses them to describe the men he talks about and that the have made no impact and then they have just died. And although there may be wise men in the world they are never heard and what they say may be wise but it makes no impact on the world ‘their words have forked no lightning’ he mean that their words have not affected people and have not spread like lightning.
From this analysis I have discovered that both these poems are very different. At first they seemed quite similar but looking deeper they are very different. W.H.Auden’s aim was to tell people how hard it was to loose a loved one and grief. He got across this message by telling people what to do in a set of instructions. This was very effective and gave out that message to the reader. Dylan Thomas did not really give out a message to the reader apart from to put up a fight against death. His aim of begging his father not to die and to create an impact worked. He did use instructions but not in the same way as W.H.Auden, however his instructions did work as he used them to beg his father to ‘not go gentle into that good night’. The main difference between these poems is that ‘Twelve Songs’ is about after death and ‘Do Not Go Gentle In to That Good Night’ is about before death. The main similarity is that they both use instructions and even though they use them very differently they are still very effective in both poems and are used well. Also both poems talk about personal feelings but only at the end. “I pray do not go gentle into that good night”, and “I thought love would last forever I was wrong.”