earticle

영어

Man is deeply conscious of the passing of time. With each tick of the clock, he progresses a step farther down time's corridor, whose finality is death. We live in a momentary present, which is in motion, flowing continually into the past. Time is as unfathomable as space. Walt Whitman and Dylan Thomas were obsessed by the thought of time and death. Through "Out of Cradle Endlessly Rocking" and "Fern Hill" the two poets' concept of time and acceptance of death can be traced by the symbols and imageries of their poems respectively. Whitman's recollection of the early childhood awakens the poetic vision of the boy poet, and the recollection itself becomes the process of mature poetic creation. Through sad experience he reconciles love with loss, life with death, and time with eternity. At the end of the poem, the poet accepts death as a means of fulfillment and completion of life. Thomas tried to identify the nature and reality of time, which was too mysterious for him to penetrate. At first he considered time as a destroyer, a thief, or an enemy. He escaped from the world of physical time to that of timelessness, that is, the world of a child where time seemed to stop. But he was forced to return to the world of physical time only to realize he should accept the human condition. He accepts the fact that time is related to life and death, destruction and creation, simultaneously. Whitman and Thomas tried to grasp the meaning of human existence, which led them to realize the dualistic nature of time. Finally they both accept death as one of human conditions.