Knauber explores the theme of light versus darkness in Thomas's poetry.

Dylan Thomas' definition of poetry as a record of the "individual struggle from darkness towards some measure of light" suggests an interest that can be traced through at least three thematic levels of his work. The conditions of light and dark represent particular aspects of experimental faith. In the first dramatic phase of his existence, Thomas inhabits a primitive world whose realms are simply day and night:

A weather in the quarter of the veins
Turns night to day; blood in their suns
Lights up the living worm.

Vitiated by the seasons' cycle and, on a lesser scale, by the rhythmic tides of sun and moon, he dwells alternately in the light and dark:

A darkness in the weather of the eye is half its light; the fathomed sea Breaks on unangled land.

The initial senory...