Light breaks where no sun shines;
Where no sea runs, the waters of the heart
Push in their tides.

These lines are from Dylan Thomas’s poem “Light breaks where no sun shines,” first published in his early collection *18 Poems* (1934). Written when Thomas was in his late teens/early twenties and establishing his reputation for dense, incantatory lyricism, the poem exemplifies his characteristic fusion of bodily imagery, natural forces, and spiritual suggestion. Rather than describing an external scene, Thomas stages an inward drama: illumination and tidal movement occur in places where, literally, they should not—suggesting a private, interior geography governed by emotion, desire, and creative energy rather than by ordinary physical laws.

The passage asserts that inner life generates its own light and motion. “Light” appearing where “no sun shines” implies illumination that is not dependent on external sources—an inward radiance of imagination, love, or consciousness. Likewise, where “no sea runs,” the “waters of the heart” still surge in “tides,” casting feeling as a powerful, cyclical force akin to oceanic movement. The lines compress Thomas’s recurring theme that the body and psyche participate in elemental processes: emotion becomes weather, blood becomes sea, and private experience takes on cosmic scale. The effect is both consoling (light can arise in darkness) and unsettling (the heart’s tides are irresistible).