And death shall have no dominion: Key Poetic Devices

Allusion

An allusion (uh-LOO-zhun) is a passing reference to a literary or historical person, place, or event, usually made without explicit identification. Thomas’s poem features one key allusion, which appears in the refrain that gives the poem its title. The title phrase, “And death shall have no dominion,” alludes to a passage from the sixth book of the New Testament, known as St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. Thomas drew his title from a famous verse in the book that, in the King James Version of the Bible, reads as follows: “Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him.” In this passage, St. Paul declares that Christ’s miraculous resurrection from the dead (following the Crucifixion) demonstrates that death no longer has any power over him. In a broader sense, Christ’s sacrifice also symbolically guaranteed salvation for his true followers, earning them everlasting life in Paradise. In this way, the Resurrection meant that death no longer had power over those who put their faith in Christ. Such a guaranteed salvation clearly reflects the key themes related to immortality and redemption, and it situates the poem within a Christian religious and moral framework.

Assonance and Consonance

Assonance and consonance play an important role in establishing the sumptuous quality of the poem’s lyrical language. Assonance and consonance are sibling concepts, in that they both refer to the repetition of certain sounds in adjacent or nearby words. Assonance specifically refers to the repetition of vowel sounds, whereas consonance refers to the repetition of consonant sounds. Thomas makes use of both techniques, often weaving them together in the same passage. Let’s start by looking at examples of assonance in the second stanza (lines 11–14):

Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break.

As indicated above, this passage features repeated I, EE, and A sounds throughout. Perhaps the most important are the I sounds, which in the second line shift from a longer I sound (as in the word “die”) to a shorter I sound (as in the word “give”). This shift in vowel sound mimics the “winding” and “twisting” motions described in the passage. Now, let’s look at examples of consonance in the same passage. In the first two lines, D and L sounds predominate:

Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily.

In the two lines that follow, however, the emphasis shifts to S and W sounds:

Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break.

These and other examples of consonance endow the poem with an engaging lyricism that enhances the beauty and power of the language.

Paradox

A paradox is a statement that initially seems logically inconsistent or absurd, yet which may be interpreted in a way that does make logical sense. Many ideas and images in Thomas’s poem seem to go against logic. Perhaps most obvious is the speaker’s repeated claim that “death shall have no dominion.” At first, it isn’t clear how this claim could be true, since it seems self-evident that death is an inescapable part of life. Yet when interpreted in a figurative way, it becomes clear that the speaker isn’t denying the reality of death so much as challenging death’s capacity to diminish the value of life. Paradox also appears in the second stanza, where the speaker describes acts of torture (lines 13–18):

Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan't crack;
And death shall have no dominion.

Paradox arises in this passage through the “sinews [that] give way” yet simultaneously “shall not break,” and through the way “all ends” are “split…up” and yet “shan’t crack.” How can the victims of torture both be broken and not broken at the same time? One possible answer is that, even though their bodies may break down, the victims’ spirits remain strong. Demonstrating such a refusal to yield, the speaker again affirms that “death shall have no dominion.”

Refrain

In poetry, the term refrain refers to any word, phrase, line, or group of lines that gets repeated over the course of a poem. Perhaps the first thing a new reader will notice about Thomas’s poem is its use of a refrain that repeats a total of six times, at the beginning and end of each stanza (lines 1, 9, 10, 18, 19, and 27). Not only does this refrain give the poem its title (“And death shall have no dominion”), it also powerfully emphasizes the poem’s primary theme about life’s perseverance in the face of death. Thomas’s use of a refrain at both the beginning and end of each stanza is unique. Certain poetic forms, such as the French ballade, feature a refrain that repeats at the end of each stanza. However, initiating each stanza with the identical refrain means that at two points in the poem the reader encounters the same line twice in a row. This repetition gives heightened importance to the words, as if they form a prayer or mantra that gains power through reiteration. Given that the particular refrain in this poem derives from a Biblical verse, it seems appropriate to interpret it as a kind of prayer.

Previous section Rhyme