Poem Analysis - How Soon The Servant Sun

A World Awakened by Paradox

Dylan Thomas's "How Soon The Servant Sun" is a dense and evocative poem exploring the complex relationship between light and darkness, creation and destruction. The poem is rich with surreal imagery and challenging syntax, creating a sense of both wonder and unease. The tone shifts from a playful observation of the morning to a more somber reflection on mortality and the cyclical nature of existence. This poem delves into the primal forces shaping our world and the internal struggles within the speaker's consciousness.

The Sun's Dominion and the Unveiling of Time

One of the poem's primary themes is the **power of the sun** as a force of revelation and change. The opening lines establish the sun as a "servant," but also as "Sir morrow mark," suggesting a duality: a humble worker and a governing authority. The sun's role is to "time unriddle," to bring clarity and understanding to the obscured realities of the world. The image of the "cupboard stone" transforming into "meat" through the sun's influence highlights the sun's ability to animate and give life to inanimate objects. This transformation demonstrates the poem's exploration of the constant flux and metamorphosis inherent in the natural world. The sun's "trumpet into meat" is a startling image, demonstrating the unexpected and sometimes brutal ways life emerges.

Mortality's Velvet Creep

The theme of **mortality** is subtly woven throughout the poem, often intertwined with images of decay and rebirth. The phrase "the velvet dead inch out" suggests a slow, insidious encroachment of death, contrasting sharply with the sun's vibrant awakening of the world. The "mouse's bone" and the "long-tailed stone/Trap" evoke images of vulnerability and entrapment, hinting at the fragility of life. Even the description of the sun as "nurse of giants by the cut sea basin" has a muted quality. It hints at a past greatness now bound to the sea's cycle. The poem avoids sentimentality, instead presenting death as a natural, albeit unsettling, part of the cosmic order.

Internal Darkness and the Struggle for Expression

The poem also grapples with the theme of **internal struggle**, particularly the struggle to express one's inner thoughts and feelings. The lines "A claw I question from the mouse's bone,/The long-tailed stone/Trap I with coil and sheet" suggest an attempt to capture and understand something elusive and perhaps frightening within the speaker's own psyche. The image of the "walking centre in the shroud" represents the speaker's attempt to create meaning and purpose in the face of mortality. However, the "womb-eyed" figure, associated with darkness, "blasts back the trumpet voice," suggesting a resistance to the clarity and light offered by the sun and a preference for the comfort and obscurity of the inner world. This internal conflict creates tension and ambiguity throughout the poem.

Symbolism of Fog and Light

The recurring image of fog is a potent symbol throughout the poem. It obscures and hides, acting as a barrier to clarity and understanding. The fog has "a bone," implying a structure or resistance to being penetrated by light. This suggests that darkness and uncertainty have a powerful presence in the world. The sun, on the other hand, is consistently associated with light, knowledge, and transformation. The contrast between the fog and the light represents the ongoing struggle between ignorance and enlightenment, concealment and revelation. The question remains whether the light can truly conquer the pervasive presence of the fog, or whether they exist in a perpetual state of tension.

A Symphony of Opposites

In conclusion, "How Soon The Servant Sun" is a complex and challenging poem that explores the interplay between opposing forces: light and darkness, life and death, internal struggle and external reality. Through its rich imagery, evocative language, and shifting tones, the poem invites readers to contemplate the cyclical nature of existence and the profound mysteries that lie both within ourselves and in the world around us. The poem's enduring significance lies in its ability to capture the human condition, the relentless dance between hope and despair, clarity and confusion.