Explore "Out of a War of Wits" by Dylan Thomas on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Out of a war of wits, when folly of words / Was the world's to me, and syllables / Fell hard as whips on an old wound, / My brain came crying into the fresh light,
Called for confessor but there was none / To purge after the wits' fight, / And I was struck dumb by the sun.
Praise that my body be whole, I've limbs / Not stumps, after the hour of battle,
For the body's brittle and the skin's white.
Praise that only the wits are hurt after the wits' fight.
The sun shines strong, dispels / Where men are men men's smells.
Overwhelmed by the sun, with a torn brain
I stand beneath the clouds' confessional, / But the hot beams rob me of speech, / After the perils of fools' talk / Reach asking arms up to the milky sky, / After a volley of questions and replies
Lift wit-hurt head for sun to sympathize, / And the sun heals, closing sore eyes.
It is good that the sun shine, / And, after it has sunk, the sane moon, / For out of a house of matchboard and stone
Where good men would argue till the stars be green, / It is good to step onto the earth, alone, / And be struck dumb, if only for a time.