Hold onto your hats, Shmoopers. Dylan Thomas's "The Force…" (put your lightsabers away, it's not that force) deals with some pretty big, emotional subjects: life, youth, passing time, death. It's all here in just 5 short stanzas (22 lines total, for you numbers freaks).
The poem uses tons of natural imagery to guide us through an exploration of that mysterious "force" from the title. The speaker gives examples of how the force fuels, "drives," certain natural events and relates the force's impact in those natural instances to its impact and action in his own life.
As the poem develops, it explores the interconnectedness of all things as the speaker strives to reconcile the fact that youth and vitality are destroyed by time, that death and decay await us all. Yeah, this one is kind of a downer. All the same, it's well worth it for the charge it gives off.