Obscurity and Dylan Thomas

A good poem may be obscure in two ways: it may express an obscure thought or idea (a thought or idea “difficult,” from one reason or another, for most readers) in relevantly obscure language; or it may express a simple thought or idea in obscure language — language not relevant to the thought or idea, but relevant to the poem as a whole. (The assumption is made that a high degree of relevance between language and poem is necessary; poems which are vulgarized or made emotionally null by lack of relevance in language are not considered here.) In the first case, an obscure thought cannot be made clear by rendering it simply; and though the words employed in this kind of poem may be readily intelligible and obviously relevant—nearly enough the right words — they are not much help as a guide to its meaning. The division can be made in another, and convenient, way by saying that either the matter or the manner of a poem may be obscure; sometimes, but rarely, both. Obscurity occurs when the reader is not up to the writer:

I have done one braver thing
Than all the worthies did;
And yet a braver thence doth spring,
Which is, to keep that hid.

It were but madness now to impart
The skill of specular stone,
When he, which can have learned the art
To cut it, can find none.

So if I now should utter this,
Others—because no more
Such stuff to work upon there is—
Would love but as before.

But he who loveliness within
Hath found, all outward loathes,
For he who colour loves, and skin,
Loves but their oldest clothes.

Madam,—In the age of sacrifices, the truth of religion was not in the greatness and fat of the offerings, but in the devotion and zeal of the sacrificers: else what could a handful of gums have done in the sight of a hecatomb? or how might I appear at this altar, except with those affections that no less love the light and witness, than they have the conscience of your virtue? If what I offer bear an acceptable odour, and hold the first strength, it is your value of it, which remembers where, when, and to whom it was kindled. Otherwise, as the times are, there comes rarely forth that thing so full of authority or example, but by assiduity and custom grows less and loses … This, yet safe in your judgment (which is a Sidney’s) is forbidden to speak more, lest it talk or look like one of the ambitious faces of the time, who, the more they paint, are the less themselves.
                   Your ladyship’s true honourer