A REFUSAL TO MOURN THE DEATH, BY FIRE, OF A CHILD IN LONDON by Dylan Thomas | SUMMARY |

"A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London" was first published in Horizon magazine in 1945 and collected in Thomas's "Deaths and Entrances" (1946). The poem mourns a young victim of Germany's air raids on London during World War II. In this poem, Dylan Thomas resists writing a conventional elegy but captures the tragedy of the girl's death in soaring, intense language. Ultimately, the speaker links her death to the larger tragedy of human mortality and the fragility of childhood innocence.