Discover Dylan Thomas's Notebook 2

December 1930 – July 1st 1932

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  • When and where it was first published: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas, edited by Ralph Maud (USA 1967, UK 1968).
  • Where you can find it now: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print.
  • Excerpt:
    This love-perhaps I overrate it.
    And make my god an any woman
    With lovely hair and teeth,
    Praising an empty gesture as a world of meaning.

  • When and where it was first published: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas, edited by Ralph Maud (USA 1967, UK 1968).
  • Where you can find it now: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print.
  • Excerpt:
    Sometimes the sky’s too bright,
    Or has too many clouds or birds,
    And far away’s too hot a sun
    To nourish thinking of him.

  • When and where it was first published: Swansea Grammar School magazine, April (1931).
  • Where you can find it now: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print
  • Excerpt:
    Here is the bright green sea,
    And, underneath, a thousand fishes
    Moving their scaly bodies soundlessly
    Among the bright green world of weeds.
  • Further information: Dylan published a poem ‘Two Images’, in his school magazine and this was the first part.

  • When and where it was first published: Swansea Grammar School magazine, April (1931).
  • Where you can find it now: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print
  • Excerpt:
    My golden bird the sun
    Has spread his wings and flown away
    Out of the swinging cage
    You call the sky.
  • Further information: Dylan published a poem ‘Two Images’ his school magazine, this was the second part.

  • When and where it was first published: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas, edited by Ralph Maud (USA 1967, UK 1968).
  • Where you can find it now: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas9). Currently out of print.
  • Excerpt:
    Live in my living;
    When I am sad, be sad;
    Take from our chaos
    Few of your own wise smiles,
    For I have merriment enough for both.

  • When and where it was first published: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas, edited by Ralph Maud (USA 1967, UK 1968).
  • Where you can find it now: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print.
  • Excerpt:
    The morning, space for Leda
    To stir the water with a buoyant foot,
    And interlude for violins
    To catch her sailing down the stream –
    The phrases on the wood aren’t hers.

  • When and where it was first published: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas, edited by Ralph Maud (USA 1967, UK 1968).
  • Where you can find it now: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print.
  • Excerpt:
    Cool may she find the day,
    And the night full of singing;
    No snow may fall
    But she shall feel it so,
    Cool for her sinking wrist,
    Melodious for her ear.

  • When and where it was first published: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas, edited by Ralph Maud (USA 1967, UK 1968).
  • Where you can find it now: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print.
  • Excerpt:
    Yesterday, the cherry sun
    Hung in its space until the steel string snapped,
    The voice lost edge,
    And the guitar was put away,
    Dropping from the window
    Into the paper sea,
    A silver dog, a gypsy’s hoop.

  • When and where it was first published: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas, edited by Ralph Maud (USA 1967, UK 1968).
  • Where you can find it now: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print.
  • Excerpt:
    Time enough to rot;
    Toss overhead
    Your golden ball of blood;
    Breath against air,
    Puffing the light’s flame to and fro,
    Not drawing in your suction’s kiss.

  • When and where it was first published: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas, edited by Ralph Maud (USA 1967, UK 1968).
  • Where you can find it now: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print.
  • Excerpt:
    Conceive these things in air,
    Wrap them in flame, they’re mine;
    Set against the granite,
    Let the two dull stones be grey.

  • When and where it was first published: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas, edited by Ralph Maud (USA 1967, UK 1968).
  • Where you can find it now: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print.
  • Excerpt:
    You be my hermaphrodite in logic,
    My avocado temptress out of magic-
    For who can keep illusions up
    Before such honest chemistry.

  • When and where it was first published: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas, edited by Ralph Maud (USA 1967, UK 1968).
  • Where you can find it now: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print.
  • Excerpt:
    Until the light is less,
    And pity’s shoulder-high
    And full of sugar-
    But does the waist entice,
    Sweet smile sweet
    Longer than time to meet the lips?-

  • When and where it was first published: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas, edited by Ralph Maud (USA 1967, UK 1968).
  • Where you can find it now: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print.
  • Excerpt:
    The neophyte, baptised in smiles,
    Is laughing boy beneath his oath,
    Breathing no poison from the oval mouth,
    Or evil from the cankered heart.
  • Further information: The word ‘neophyte’ is the only link with the later poem,’ Then was my neophyte’.

  • When and where it was first published: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas, edited by Ralph Maud (USA 1967, UK 1968).
  • Where you can find it now: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print.
  • Excerpt:
    To be encompassed by the brilliant earth
    Breathing on all sides pungently
    Into her vegetation’s lapping mouths
    Must feel like such encroachment
    As edges off your nerves to mine.
  • Further information: Dylan uses ‘wax tower’ again in ‘Altarwise by owl-light’.

  • When and where it was first published: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas, edited by Ralph Maud (USA 1967, UK 1968).
  • Where you can find it now: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print.
  • Excerpt:
    Who is to may
    My lying long,
    Or blow away its grains,
    Across my lover’s sandy bed,
    Sick at the coming close,
    Yet iron-white and loth to part,
    Ascetic, letting the hand loll
    Upon my sybarite’s strong calf?
  • Further information: This has a similar style to notebook four, poem’ Twenty-Nine’, an early version of ‘We lying by seasand’.

  • When and where it was first published: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas, edited by Ralph Maud (USA 1967, UK 1968).
  • Where you can find it now: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print.
  • Excerpt:
    The natural day and night
    Are full enough to drown my melancholy
    Of sound and sight,
    Vigour and harmony in light to none,
    One hour spend my time for me
    In turning impulses to calls.
  • Further information: This poem appears out of sequence in the notebook.

  • When and where it was first published: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas, edited by Ralph Maud (USA 1967, UK 1968).
  • Where you can find it now: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print.
  • Excerpt:
    Although through my bewildered way
    Of crying off this unshaped evil,
    Death to the magical when all is done,
    Age come to you – you’re bright and useless,
    Soon to my care, my love,
    But soon to die.

  • When and where it was first published: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas, edited by Ralph Maud (USA 1967, UK 1968).
  • Where you can find it now: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print.
  • Excerpt:
    High on a hill,
    Straddle and soak,
    Out of the way of the eyes of men,
    Out of the way,
    Straddle her winkled knees
    Until the day’s broken.

  • When and where it was first published: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas, edited by Ralph Maud (USA 1967, UK 1968).
  • Where you can find it now: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print.
  • Excerpt:
    Refract the lady, drown the profiteer
    Inside the angles of his sanguine cup.
    If he is jew then rend his gaberdine,
    If Christian cut him navel up.

  • When and where it was first published: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas, edited by Ralph Maud (USA 1967, UK 1968).
  • Where you can find it now: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print.
  • Excerpt:
    Into be home from home
    And split the searching for the truth
    Into a part for casuistry
    And then a part for ghost and jew,
    Of Islam’s people.

  • When and where it was first published: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas, edited by Ralph Maud (USA 1967, UK 1968).
  • Where you can find it now: The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas, The New Centenary Edition, edited by John Goodby (2014) and Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print.
  • Excerpt:
    The time took has much
    In breath and width with that
    Old other known as pressure,
    For it’s love one word or not,
    Though call it god and hurt me,
    Heat and offend the widow.
  • Further information: This poem about an interest in girls, is particularly surreal.

  • When and where it was first published: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas, edited by Ralph Maud (USA 1967, UK 1968).
  • Where you can find it now: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print.
  • Excerpt:
    Through sober to the truth when
    All hold out their aqueous hands,
    Touching me low
    Be any frond of smiles,
    And that’s transition worth my toil.

  • When and where it was first published: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas, edited by Ralph Maud (USA 1967, UK 1968).
  • Where you can find it now: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print.
  • Excerpt:
    It is the wrong, the hurt, the mineral,
    That makes its stroke
    Through wisdom, for my age,
    And sin, for my two-headed joy –
    The particles aren’t more than dust,
    And whose affections aren’t corrupt?

  • When and where it was first published: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas, edited by Ralph Maud (USA 1967, UK 1968).
  • Where you can find it now: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print.
  • Excerpt:
    Even the voice will not last
    Master can but vanish
    Like a shaft no deader self it has
    Refracting till the colour snaps
    Time place and like a bell the chiming strength.
  • Further information: Dylan did not use commas in this poem.

  • When and where it was first published: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas, edited by Ralph Maud (USA 1967, UK 1968).
  • Where you can find it now: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print.
  • Excerpt:
    True love’s inflated; from a truthful shape
    Hope blew it to a cylinder
    Of faithfulness where there is none
    However true we are in falsities,
    Of ease where there can never be.

  • When and where it was first published: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas, edited by Ralph Maud (USA 1967, UK 1968).
  • Where you can find it now: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print.
  • Excerpt:
    Since, on a quiet night,
    I heard them talk
    Who have no voices but the winds’
    Of all the mystery there is in life
    And all the mastery there is in death.

  • When and where it was first published: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas, edited by Ralph Maud (USA 1967, UK 1968).
  • Where you can find it now: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print.
  • Excerpt:
    They are the only dead that did not love,
    Lipless and tongueless in the sour earth
    Staring at the others, poor uncovers.
    They are the only living who did love,
    So are we full with strength,
    Ready to rise, easy to sleep.

  • When and where it was first published: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas, edited by Ralph Maud (USA 1967, UK 1968).
  • Where you can find it now: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print.
  • Excerpt:
    Have hold on my heart utterly,
    Or let it go; pierce through and through
    Or leave unpierced,
    For I am faithless as the rest.

  • When and where it was first published: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas, edited by Ralph Maud (USA 1967, UK 1968).
  • Where you can find it now: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print.
  • Excerpt:
    The caterpillar is with child;
    The leopard stirs his loin,
    And there is temper in his cry,
    And there is cunning in his stride,
    A hard, sleek cataract of fear.
  • Further information: It appears that the first nine lines of this poem were started in January 1931 and then continued in August 1931, which would explain why this poem is out of sequence.

  • When and where it was first published: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas, edited by Ralph Maud (USA 1967, UK 1968).
  • Where you can find it now: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print.
  • Excerpt:
    Foot, head, or traces
    Are on sandy soil their spirit level;
    Their level is the length
    Of foot or head we’ll be the time.
  • Further information: There is a number of typescripts of this poem at the British Library with the title ‘Little Problem’.

  • When and where it was first published: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas, edited by Ralph Maud (USA 1967, UK 1968).
  • Where you can find it now: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print.
  • Further information: This is crossed out and this exact poem can be found later in the notebook as XLVII.

  • When and where it was first published: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas, edited by Ralph Maud (USA 1967, UK 1968).
  • Where you can find it now: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print.
    • fusion_li_item icon=”fa-book”]Excerpt:
    Or be my paramour or die,
    Lie or be lost to love,
    Give up your gravity
    Holding a too-heavy heart,
    And take a gaiety without regret.[/fusion_li_item]

  • When and where it was first published: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas, edited by Ralph Maud (USA 1967, UK 1968).
  • Where you can find it now: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print.
  • Excerpt:
    The womb and the woman’s grave
    Lie near, the thumb and thread
    Are gone – no labour’ll thrive
    Which sketch not from God
    Some strength no labour has.

  • When and where it was first published: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas, edited by Ralph Maud (USA 1967, UK 1968).
  • Where you can find it now: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print.
  • Excerpt:
    Let Sheba bear a love for Solomon
    Out of her woman’s heart and her content
    That bridges time and like the morning sun
    Lays its bright rod on all contempt.

  • When and where it was first published: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas, edited by Ralph Maud (USA 1967, UK 1968).
  • Where you can find it now: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print.
  • Excerpt:
    There was one world and there is another,
    For in our life we’re dead as wood,
    No bones or blood,
    Out of a wooden mother,
    And in our death learning such truth
    AS thought and told
    That wood shall rot, but wood shan’t rot.

  • When and where it was first published: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas, edited by Ralph Maud (USA 1967, UK 1968).
  • Where you can find it now: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print.
  • Excerpt:
    For us there cannot be welcome
    For sleep at the day’s end or the night’s end
    For many a time of tiredness,
    For welcoming sleep we welcome death.

  • When and where it was first published: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas, edited by Ralph Maud (USA 1967, UK 1968).
  • Where you can find it now: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print.
  • Excerpt:
    An end to substance in decay’s a sequence
    Showing here and there a sign of wear,
    Uses as it is by man and beast,
    Turned by the artist to an alchemy.

  • When and where it was first published: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas, edited by Ralph Maud (USA 1967, UK 1968).
  • Where you can find it now: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print.
  • Excerpt:
    Why is the blood red and the grass green
    Shan’t be answered till the voice is still
    That drieth the veins with its moan
    Of man and his meaning, for the voice is cruel
    That drouth the veins from the vines
    And the blood from the high hills.
  • Further information: Like notebook 3, number ‘thirty-seven’ (which was to become ‘Why the East Wind Chills’) the theme of this poem is unanswerable questions.

  • When and where it was first published: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas, edited by Ralph Maud (USA 1967, UK 1968).
  • Where you can find it now: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print.
  • Excerpt:
    Have cheated constancy
    Of mood and love,
    Have worn stuff thin
    That made air fit to breathe
    And the dark brain cool.

  • When and where it was first published: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas, edited by Ralph Maud (USA 1967, UK 1968).
  • Where you can find it now: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print.
  • Excerpt:
    There’s plenty in the world that doth not die,
    And much that lives to perish,
    That rises and then falls, buds but to wither;
    The season’s son, though he should know his setting
    Up to the second of the dark coming,
    Death sights and sees with no misgiving
    A rib of cancer on the fluid sky.

  • When and where it was first published: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas, edited by Ralph Maud (USA 1967, UK 1968).
  • Where you can find it now: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print.
  • Excerpt:
    This time took has much
    In breath and width with that
    Old other known as pressure,
    For it’s love one word or not,
    Though call it god and hurt me,
    Heat and offend the widow,
    Each to his separate lesson
    To mould, alone, masonic reason.

  • When and where it was first published: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas, edited by Ralph Maud (USA 1967, UK 1968).
  • Where you can find it now: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print.
  • Excerpt:
    Which of you put out his rising,
    And turned his flame into a blind wick,
    Of you pale-minded virgins which took down your trees
    Onto his lifted face, who is so pitiless,
    Can wipe away the thought of passion like a crumb.

  • When and where it was first published: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas, edited by Ralph Maud (USA 1967, UK 1968).
  • Where you can find it now: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print.
  • Excerpt: Written for a Personal Epitaph
    Feeding the worm
    Who do I blame
    Because laid down
    At last by time,
    Here under the earth with girl and thief,
    Who do I blame?

  • When and where it was first published: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas, edited by Ralph Maud (USA 1967, UK 1968).
  • Where you can find it now: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print.
  • Excerpt:
    When you have ground such beauty down to dust
    As flies before the breath
    And, at the touch, trembles with lover’s fever,
    Or sundered it to look the closer.
  • Further information: This is exactly the same as poem ‘XXXIV’, earlier in the notebook.

  • When and where it was first published: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas, edited by Ralph Maud (USA 1967, UK 1968).
  • Where you can find it now: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print.
  • Excerpt:
    Server from what I trust
    The things, this time, I love,
    Death and the shy entanglement of sense
    Crying for age to bless its sad sobriety.
  • Further information: This poem was ‘lost and then found’, which is why it is out of sequence. At the Humanities Research Centre in Texas, there is an early version of this poem (29 April 1931) written in a copy of Osbert Sitwell’s Argonauts.

  • When and where it was first published: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas, edited by Ralph Maud (USA 1967, UK 1968).
  • Where you can find it now: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print.
  • Further information: This very short, six line, poem is titled, ‘Introductory Poem’. It perhaps suggests that Dylan intended to use this poem as a preface to a volume.

  • When and where it was first published: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas, edited by Ralph Maud (USA 1967, UK 1968).
  • Where you can find it now: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print.
  • Excerpt:
    Take up this seed, it is most beautiful,
    Within its husk opening in fire and air
    Into a flower’s stem and a flower’s mouth,
    To lean upon the wall of summer
    And touch the lips of the dark wind.

  • When and where it was first published: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas, edited by Ralph Maud (USA 1967, UK 1968).
  • Where you can find it now: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print.
  • Excerpt:
    There in her tears were laughter and tears again,
    O so unstable, never to love for long
    While the body’s full of the heart’s pain
    And the heart breaks down.

  • When and where it was first published: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas, edited by Ralph Maud (USA 1967, UK 1968).
  • Where you can find it now: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print.
  • Excerpt:
    How can the knotted root
    Be trapped in a snare of syllables,
    The tendril or, what’s stranger, the high flower
    Caught, like a ferret though a thought it is,
    Inside a web of words.

  • When and where it was first published: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas, edited by Ralph Maud (USA 1967, UK 1968).
  • Where you can find it now: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print.
  • Excerpt:
    Children of darkness got no wings,
    This we know we got no wings,
    Stay, dramatic figures, tethered down
    By weight and cloth and fact.

  • When and where it was first published: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas, edited by Ralph Maud (USA 1967, UK 1968).
  • Where you can find it now: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print.
  • Excerpt:
    It’s not in misery but in oblivion,
    Not vertically in a mood of joy
    Screaming the spring
    Over the ancient winter,
    He’ll lie down, and our breath
    Will chill the roundness of his cheeks,
    And make his wide mouth home.
  • Further information: This poem is out of sequence.

  • When and where it was first published: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas, edited by Ralph Maud (USA 1967, UK 1968).
  • Where you can find it now: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print.
  • Excerpt:
    What lunatic’s whored after shadow,
    Followed the full-voiced stream
    To stoop and fast it vinegar,
    Can find the body anything but shade,
    That, too, wet with tears,
    And anything but acid the clear water?

  • When and where it was first published: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas, edited by Ralph Maud (USA 1967, UK 1968).
  • Where you can find it now: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print.
  • Excerpt:
    Here is a fact for my teeth
    That I’ve snapped off the bone,
    Robs death of its comforter,
    That bites good and deep,
    There’s much sense in sleep.
  • Further information: Dylan left the next page of the notebook blank which may suggest that he wanted to write a longer poem.

  • When and where it was first published: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas, edited by Ralph Maud (USA 1967, UK 1968).
  • Where you can find it now: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print.
  • Excerpt:
    Any matter move it to conclusion
    Begs for a refuge with the bone
    So any talk carefree as words can
    Down in the sweet-smelling earth
    Takes start and end in