Here I look at two 20th century poems about death and dying. Each deals with the subject through images drawn from the natural world or from everyday experience. The poems are are Edward Thomas's Lights Out and D. H. Lawrence's The Ship of Death. Both poems contemplate the end of life with unusual honesty, yet they arrive at very different visions of what awaits us. I explore the contrast.
The poems are here [ Valid June 15th 2026: Open in new tab]: The Ship of Death and Lights Out
Edward Thomas's Lights Out and D. H. Lawrence's The
Ship of Death are poems that confront mortality without sentimentality.
Neither turns away from the fact of death. But these poems express two very
different visions of what it means to approach the end of life.
In Lights Out, Thomas guides the traveller to the
edge of an "unfathomable" forest. Roads and tracks lead towards it,
but at the brink they lose their certainty:
Many a road and track
That, since the dawn's first crack,
Up to the forest brink,
Deceived the travellers,
Suddenly now blurs,
And in they sink.
The roads of life appear to promise destinations and
purposes. Yet at the forest's edge these distinctions dissolve. The traveller
enters a realm beyond ordinary understanding.
Crucially, Thomas never tells us what lies within the wood.
The mystery remains intact. The forest is 'unfathomable' because it
resists explanation. Yet the poem is not troubled by this ignorance. On the
contrary, its serenity arises from accepting it. The speaker declares, 'I
desire to go.'There is no struggle against the darkness. The forest is
entered willingly. The poem's power lies in its trust that not everything needs
to be known. Death is imagined as a mystery into which one passes.
Lawrence's poem begins from a very different premise. Here
death is not a mystery, but a destination repeatedly named. That destination is
oblivion.
Build then the ship of death, for you must take
the longest journey, to oblivion.
The word appears more than once and stands at the centre of
the poem's vision. Unlike Thomas's forest, oblivion is not unfathomable. Its
meaning is stark. It suggests the extinction of consciousness, the erasure of
identity, the end of striving and memory.
Yet the drama of Lawrence's poem does not lie solely in its
destination. It lies in the possibility that the destination is not always finally reached. The poem's most
striking moment comes with a sudden reversal:
Ah wait, wait, for there is the dawn,
the cruel dawn of coming back to life...
The adjective 'cruel' transforms the poem. The
return to life is not welcomed. It is endured. The voyager approaches oblivion,
only to be drawn once more into existence. Death itself is no longer the
primary challenge. The challenge is recurrence. The voyage is undertaken,
interrupted, and perhaps undertaken again.
This difference separates Lawrence fundamentally from
Thomas. Thomas imagines a mystery entered into. For Lawrence the destination has a finality, but it is the journey which carries the uncertainty.
Even the famous image of the 'little ship, with oars
and food and little dishes' acquires a different significance in this
light. At first these details seem reassuringly domestic. They bring the
language of the comfort of ordinary life into a poem about death. Yet they do
not soften the destination. Rather, they express sympathy for the traveller. The
little provisions are not evidence that the journey is easy. They are evidence
that it is difficult. The tenderness lies not in confidence about what awaits
but in care for the one who must undertake the voyage.
Meantime, Lawrence's allusions to Shakespeare's Hamlet
are particularly revealing. Hamlet imagines death as ‘the undiscovered
country from whose bourn no traveller returns.’ Lawrence presents a more
unsettling possibility. His poem expresses the anxiety is that the traveller may return
before the voyage has finally achieved its destination. The repeated references
to oblivion suggest that extinction remains the goal towards which the journey
moves, yet the 'cruel dawn of coming back to life' introduces that
possibility of interruption and recurrence.
The Hamlet echoes deepen the poem's darkness. Shakespeare's
prince contemplates the possibility of ending life with a ‘bare bodkin’ yet hesitates at the uncertainty of what may
follow death. Lawrence inherits something of that sombre atmosphere. The
question is no longer whether death should be chosen; death is inevitable. The
question is how one prepares for its arrival.
The result is a poem that possesses a stoic rather than a
consoling wisdom. Lawrence does not ask us to trust a mystery. He does not
promise that oblivion is benign. Instead he insists that the voyage awaits us
and that preparation is necessary. This is where the contrast with Thomas is
sharpest. Thomas finds peace in mystery. Lawrence finds dignity in necessity. The
traveller in Lights Out walks willingly into the wood. The voyager in The
Ship of Death builds his vessel because he must.
Both poets confront mortality honestly. Both reject
sentimentality. Yet they arrive at very different forms of wisdom. Thomas asks
us to trust the darkness. Lawrence asks us to prepare for it.