In my craft or sullen art
Exercised in the still night
When only the moon rages
And the lovers lie abed
With all their griefs in their arms,
I labour by singing light
Not for ambition or bread
Or the strut and trade of charms
On the ivory stages
But for the common wages
Of their most secret heart.

Not for the proud man apart
From the raging moon I write
On these spindrift pages
Not for the towering dead
With their nightingales and psalms
But for the lovers, their arms
Round the griefs of the ages,
Who pay no praise or wages
Nor heed my craft or art.

Why do poets write? Is it for themselves? Their readers? Posterity?

Dylan Thomas offers a rather non-traditional answer to this question, but one which (on reflection) seems much truer than the usual ones. As he himself said elsewhere, “My poems are written for the the love of Man and in praise of God”. This poem puts those words into practice.

— Thomas

Construction

Notice the very interesting rhyme scheme - ‘abcde bd ecca abcde ecca’ - not quite regular, but strong enough to lend a degree of structure to the poem. Indeed, Dylan Thomas’ verse is almost always meticulously structured, each word chosen with painstaking care and attention to detail¹. It’s not by accident that he refers to the practice of poetry as a ‘craft’…

The wonderful thing is that despite this degree of construction, his poetry remains natural and spontaneous. This in itself is the highest possible testimony to his mastery of the language; I can think of no other poet since Yeats² who could craft words with such consummate ease while retaining such depth and power of meaning.

Another thing: Notice the typical Thomas compounds - ‘raging moon’, ‘spindrift pages’, ‘towering dead’, and my especial favourite, ‘singing light’. They each contain more meaning than whole stanzas of a less concentrated poet’s output; yet they’re so natural as to go unnoticed on a first reading. Skilfully, skilfully done.