And death shall have no dominion.
Dead man naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.
And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan't crack;
And death shall have no dominion.
And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Though they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion.
We were split into three groups and each picked out one stanza each to perform combining voice and movement, performing as a chorus.
My group chose the second stanza. In our performance we used forms of chorus;
- UNISON
- CANON
- MOVEMENT
- 1 WORD EACH
- CALL AND RESPONSE
In my group I was with LIAM, GRETA AND JENNY
We all decided to say AND DEATH SHALL HAVE NO DOMINION in unison once at the beginning and once at the end, this has a strong effect and emphasises what the poem is about.
We created movements that matched the words, for example;
"TWISTING ON RACKS WHEN SINEWS GIVE WAY"
I performed this line, and when I said TWISTING, I used a twisting movement and turned my body round in a full circle, twisting my arms around my torso. We used CALL AND RESPONSE so when I said TWISTING the group repeated using the movment, and when I said ON RACKS WHEN SINEWS GIVE WAY the group repeated. The movement I used for this was to lean onto GRETAS back and pull her back and forth, as SINEW is a word for muscles and joints giving way, so we wanted to portray this through her body.
We also used movements to symbolise the words when JENNY said "STRAPPED TO A WHEEL, YET THEY SHALL NOT BREAK" We symbolised a wheel turning using our arms when she said this, and all put our arms together within a circle when she said "YET THEY SHALL NOT BREAK" symbolising unison and power.
The movements we used when performing allowed us to project the words with power and meaning, and our performance came across as very powerful and confident.
