1. ‘Do not go gentle into that good night’ was enclosed in a letter to Princess Caetani on 28 May 1951, the postscript of which reads: ‘I have just finished the short poem I enclose […] The only person I can’t show the little enclosed poem to is, of course, my father, who doesn’t know he’s dying.’ The poem was published in Botteghe Oscure in November 1951. The strict villanelle form of the poem (only two rhymes, with the first and third lines of the first verse repeated throughout as a refrain) helps to keep in check the poet’s anguish at his father’s dying.