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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: Twenty Five Poems (1936) and Collected Poems (1952) as ‘Today, this insect’.
- Where you can find it now: The Collected Poems, The New Centenary Edition, edited by John Goodby (2014) and Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print
- Excerpt:
Today, this hour I breathe
In symbols, be they so light, of tongue and air,
The now I have space
And time that is already half
More than that I tell you in
I have divided
Sense and trust. - Further information: Today, this insect from Twenty-five Poems(1936) and Dylan’s Collected Poems (1952) has a number of lines used first 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:
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: 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:
Rain cuts the place we tread,
A sparkling fountain for us
With no fountain boy but me
To balance on my palms
The water from a street of clouds.
- 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: The Map of Love (1939)
- 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 spire cranes; its statue
Is an aviary,
And from the nest
Of stone not straw
He does not let the nightingales
Blunt their tawny necks on rock,
Or pierce the sky with diving –
So wing in weed
And foot an inch in froth. - Further information: This was a first attempt of The Spire Cranes, published in The Map of Love (1939) and Dylan’s Collected Poems (1952), though this was a heavily revised version.
- 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: The Map Of Love (1939)
- 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:
Never to reach the oblivious dark
And not to know
Any man’s troubles nor your own –
Negatives impress negation,
Empty of light and find the darkness lit –
Never is nightmare.
- 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 into the warmth
All argument speaker not a nickel’s worth. - Further information: This poem does not include commas.
- 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:
Too long, skeleton, death’s risen
Out of the soil and seed into drive,
Chal cooled by leaves in the hot season,
Too long, skeleton, death’s all alive.
- 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:
No man knows loveliness at all,
Though he be beauty blessed,
Who has not known the loveliness of May,
The blossoms and the throated trees.
- 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 a very short poem noted fragment, April’32.
- 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 said, tired of trafficking,
The sea moves and man moves blind,
While the sea moved calmAnd Man, obsessed,
Moved like a mole within his fleshy prison.
- 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 a very short poem of just eight lines and thirty six 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: 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:
Being but men, we walked into the trees
Afraid, letting our syllables be soft
For fear of waking the rooks,
For fear of coming
Noiselessly into a world of wings and cries. - Further information: This setting of this poem, and the next poem, is Cwmdonkin Park, which was close to Dylan’s childhood home.
- When and where it was first published: Life and Letters Today (October 1941) and Deaths and Entrances (1946) , the 1941 revised version
- Where you can find it now: The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas, The New Centenary Edition, edited by John Goodby (2014) (the revised version) and Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print.
- Excerpt:
The hunchback in the park,
A solitary mister
Propped between trees and water,
Going daft for fifty seven years,
Is going dafter. - Further information: The setting of this poem is Cwmdonkin Park close to Dylan’s childhood home. The July 1941 revision of this poem was added to Deaths and Entrances (1946) and Dylan’s Collected Poems (1952)
- When and where it was first published: Twenty-five Poems (1936) , the revised version
- Where you can find it now: The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas, The New Centenary Edition, edited by John Goodby (2014) (the revised version) and Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print.
- Excerpt:
Out of the sighs a little comes,
But not of grief because I have vanquished that
Before the agony. - Further information: The first two verses of the later ‘Out of Sighs’ was this poem. The rest of the poem was taken from the later, unnumbered poem, ‘Were that enough’. It was published in Twenty-five Poems (1936) and Dylan’s Collected Poems (1952)
- 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 beauty on a bough
I can’t translate
Through words or love,
So high it is, a bird unto his mate,
Singing to prove
That in each note she lives for him again.
- 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.
- Excerpt:
At last, in hail and rain,
The family failings lost the gain
Made by these ten years’ reading:
Enterprise, machine and devildom
All windward of the cleft skies. - Further information: This poem has a dated revision of ‘May 1932’, so not long after Dylan had completed the first draft.
- 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:
Upon your held-out hand
Count the endless days until they end,
Feel, as the pulse grows tired,
The angels’ wings beating about your head
Unsounding, they beat so soft. - Further information: Perhaps the ‘new asylum’ that Dylan mentions in the poem was based on Cefn Coed Hospital, which had just opened close to Cwmdonkin Drive, Dylan’s childhood home.
- When and where it was first published: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas, edited by Ralph Maud (USA 1967, UK 1968). Currently out of print.
- Where you can find it now: Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print.
- Excerpt:
Nearly summer, and the devil
Still comes visiting his poor relations,
If not in person sends his unending evil
By messengers, the flight of birds
Spelling across the sky his devil’s news.
- 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: Pome
How the birds had become talkative,
No longer criss-cross on the sky
Or flying – lo there razor foot –
Near to water – lo there foam foe
Bruising the long waves with thy wing.
- When and where it was first published: Twenty-five Poems (1936) as ‘Out of the sighs’.
- Where you can find it now: The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas, The New Centenary Edition, edited by John Goodby (2014) as ‘Out of the Sighs’ and Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print.
- Excerpt:
Were that enough, enough to ease the pain,
Feeling regret when this is wasted
That made me happy in the sun
And, sleeping, made me dream. - Further information: This poem was added on to ‘Out of the Sighs’ (Notebook 2, LVVVI) to produce ‘Out of the Sighs’ as published in Twenty-five Poems (1936) and Dylan’s Collected Poems (1952)