Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this poem line-by-line.
Lines 16-19
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.
- In the last lines of the poem, the speaker turns to addressing his father. His father is on the verge of death, which the speaker describes as a "sad height."
- We think this is probably an allusion to looking down into the Biblical valley of death; the metaphorical mountain where the father stands is the edge of the mortal world.
- The speaker begs his father to cry passionately, which will be both a blessing and a curse. After all, the father's death is heartbreaking. But if he battles against the odds, it might also be heroic.
- The speaker ends with the two lines that are repeated throughout the poem, asking or instructing his father not to submit to death – instead, he should rant and rave and fight it every step of the way.