do not go gentle into that good night

On a whim, my AP girls and I decided to wander into villanelles this morning. We started with David Huddle's "Roanoke Pastorale" and ended up comparing it to Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night." We talked about the fact that both poems mightily resist a straightforward interpretation, but that both are meditations on mortality. We looked up words like "green" and "frail" and "rave." We contradicted ourselves. We read aloud. We listened to an archaic-sounding Irishman read his poem aloud.
An hour and twenty later, my entire lesson plan was out the window. History. Weren't we supposed to talk about The Sun Also Rises and write an essay? Instead, we were lost in words and rhymes.
Best class of the year so far, entirely off the map.

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.