Quote:
Originally posted by noodles
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
i think that the poet is urging his dying father to fight against, rather than accept death passively, and "on the sad height" may suggest that his father is on the deathbead. But i need word-for-word annotaion for the phrase "on sad height", and "curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears". Why does the poet ask his father to curse and bless the poet himself (oxymoron?), and with his father's tears? or my interpretation misses the point. thx.
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'Height' is likely a euphemistic allusion to heaven's precipice, with 'sad' reflective of the son's reluctance to see him go. A pensive suicidee on a cliff top may be described as standing on a 'sad height' - on the edge of death in great sadness. The use of 'there' (on a sad height) serves to distance the father, with the rest of the stanza seeking to bring him closer. The juxtaposition of 'curse, bless' serves to reinforce the irrelevance of what is said - as wolf said he is seeking a response, any response, with 'curse' indicative of the son's desire to take some of his father's pain, bear it on his shoulders instead, as if by cursing his son the father could release some of his crushing inevitability onto him. The word 'now' brings an immediacy to the line and 'fierce tears' is emotive, evoking an image of intense, violent pain. The 'curse, bless' is the son's attempt to associate with the 'fierce tears', engage with them, redirect them so as not to burn his father's cheeks. It is a poem of pain and conflict and crucially, the title of the poem, 'Do not go gently...' and the recurring 'Rage, rage against the dying of the light' suggests an attempt to bring life into the moment of death.
Hope this helps!
