When and where it was first published: Dylan Thomas: The Notebook Poems 1930-1934, edited by Ralph Maud (1989).

Where you can find it now: Dylan Thomas: The Notebook Poems 1930-1934, edited by Ralph Maud (1989). Currently out of print.

Excerpt:
Sweet as the comets’ kiss night sealed
New faith, and dark the new friend fell,
With an ease and a smoothness
I knew of old,
Irregular cries in the wind
Meaning no more than before, but with peace.

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 death though I have died
Many deaths, and have risen again
With an unhealed wound and a cracked heart.

Further information: ‘I dreamed a genesis’ of 18 Poems (1934), is very much like 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:
Had she not loved me at the beginning
There would have been no beginning,
Life in my mouth would not have tasted surely,
I would have not gone up to the places of angels.

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:
Before the gas fades with a harsh last bubble,
And the hunt in the hatstand discovers no coppers,
Before the last fag and the shirt sleeves and slippers,
The century’s trap will have snapped round your middle.

Further information: The poem is likely to have been influenced by the great depression which caused mass unemployment across Wales. Dylan would have observed this while working for a Swansea newspaper during his teenage years.

When and where it was first published: Twenty-five Poems (1936) as ‘Was there a time’.

Where you can find it now: The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas, The New Centenary Edition, edited by John Goodby (2014), as ‘Was there a time’ and Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print.

Excerpt:
Hold on, whatever slips beyond the edge,
To hope, a firefly in the veins; to trust
Of loving; to keeping close, lest
Words set septic, the loving thinking.

Further information: Dylan had just learnt the news of his aunt’s terminal cancer when he wrote this poem. A much revised version (December 1935) of this poem was identical to ‘Was there a time’ published in Twenty-five Poems (1936) and Dylan’s Collected Poems (1952)

When and where it was first published: Life and Letters Today (Summer 1938) and The Map of Love (1939) as the revised ‘After the funeral’.

Where you can find it now: The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas, The New Centenary Edition, edited by John Goodby (2014), as the revised ‘After the funeral’ and Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print.

Excerpt:
After the funeral, mule praises, brays,
Shaking of mule heads betoken
Grief at the going to the earth of man
Of woman, as yet another long woe broken.

Further information: After his aunt Annie’s funeral in 1933, Dylan wrote this poem which was later adapted (1938) to become the After the Funeral from The Map of Love (1939) and Dylan’s Collected Poems (1952)

When and where it was first published:

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:
‘We who were young are old.
It is the oldest cry.
Age sours before youth’s tasted in mouth
And any sweetness that it hath
Is sucked away’.

Further information: The deleted last line of this poem became the final section of notebook 3, poem ‘nine’ which Dylan also referred to as ‘Conclusion to poem 7’.

When and where it was first published: Wales (March 1939) and The Map of Love (1939), as the revised ‘On no work of words’.

Where you can find it now: The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas, The New Centenary Edition, edited by John Goodby (2014), as the revised ‘On no work of words’ and Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print.

Further information: This very short poem was adapted and became the first section of ‘On no work of words’ as published in The Map of Love (1939) 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: Conclusion of Poem Seven
No faith to fix the teeth on carries
Men old before their time into dark valleys
Where death lies dead asleep, one bright eye open,
No faith to sharpen the old wits leaves us.
Meaning no more than before, but with peace.

Further information: Dylan talks about extensive and global suffering in this poem.

When and where it was first published: Deaths and Entrances (1946) , as the revised ‘Holy Spring’.

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:
Out of a war of wits, when folly of words
Was the world’s to me, and syllables
Fell hard as whips on an old wound,
Me brain came crying into the fresh light.

Further information: The poem is based on the literary evenings with friends. There are connections with ‘Holy Spring’ of Deaths and Entrances (1946) and Dylan’s Collected Poems (1952)

When and where it was first published: Dylan Thomas: The Notebook Poems 1930-1934, edited by Ralph Maud (1989)

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:
In wasting one drop from the heart’s honey cells,
One precious drop that, for the moment, quells
Desire’s pain, eases love’s itch and ills,
There’s less remains, for only once love fills,
When love’s mouth knows its greatest thirst.

Further information: Dylan warns the reader not to love too early before they know what ‘real’ love is.

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 all the fever of the August months,
The winter convalescence,
In this damned world there’s little to moan over
But the passing of the one and the coming of the other.

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:
Their faces shone under some radiance
Of mingled moonlight and lamplight
That turned the empty kisses into meaning,
The island of such penny love.

Further information: Dylan deleted the original title ‘In Hyde Park’.

When and where it was first published: New Verse (December 1935) and Twenty-five Poems (1936), as revised 1936 version.

Where you can find it now: The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas, The New Centenary Edition, edited by John Goodby (2014), as the revised 1936 version, and Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print.

Excerpt:
I have longed to move away
From the hissing of the spent lie;
And the old terrors’ continual cry
Growing more terrible as the day.

Further information: The was revised on 13 January 1936 and appeared in Twenty-five Poems (1936) and Dylan’s Collected Poems (1952)

When and where it was first published: Life and Letters Today (October 1941) and Deaths and Entrances (1946), revised as ‘On the marriage of a virgin’.

Where you can find it now: The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas, The New Centenary Edition, edited by John Goodby (2014), as revised as ‘On the marriage of a virgn’ and Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print.

Excerpt:
Then walking in a single bed when light
Fell on the upturned oval of her face
And morning’s shone
vast in the sky
(Her last night’s lover) is gone forever.

Further information: Dylan may well have been thinking about his sister Nancy’s upcoming marriage when he wrote this poem which was revised in 1941 which Dylan published as, ‘On the marriage of a virgin’, in Deaths and Entrances (1946) and Dylan’s Collected Poems (1952)

When and where was it first published: Part of the poem (except lines.31-58) in Herald of Wales on 8 June 1935 and collected in The Poems, edited by Daniel Jones (1971).

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:
See, on gravel pathfinder the hairspring trees,
He steps so near the water that a swan’s wing
Might play upon his lank locks with its wind,
The lake’s voice and the rolling of mock waves
Make discord with the voice within his ribs
That thunders as heart thunders, slaws as heart slows.

Further information: When giving the broadcast, ‘Reminiscences of Childhood’, Dylan read the last line of this poem as an example of poetry never to be published. A little ‘white lie’ for effect as it was published in the Herald of Wales.

When and where was it first published: Poetry (Chicago), August 1938, Life and Letters Today, September 1938 and The Map of Love (1939) as the revised ‘O make me a mask’.

Where you can find it now: The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas, The New Centenary Edition, edited by John Goodby (2014), as the revised ‘O make me a mask’ and Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print.

Excerpt:
Make me a mask to shut from razor glances
Of men’s eyes and the stare of day
Rape and rebellion on my face,
A countenance hewed out of river ice.

Further information: Nine lines of this poem were used in ‘O make me a mask’ (written November 1937) and published in The Map of Love (1939) 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:
To follow the fox at the hounds’ tails
At at their baying move a tailor’s inch
To follow, wild as the chicken stealer,
Scent through the clutches of the heather,
Leads to fool’s paradise where the redecorated killer
Deserves no brush, but a fool’s ambush,
Broken flank or head-on crash.

When and where was it first published: The Poems, edited by Daniel Jones (1971).

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 ploughman’s gone, the handsome driver,
Left in the records of living a not-to-bd-broken picture,
In sun and rain working for good and gain,
Left only the voice in the old village choir
To remember, cast stricture on mechanics and man.

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:
Light, I know, treads the ten million stars,
And blooms in the Hesperides. Light stirs
Out of the heavenly sea onto the moon’s shores.

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:
My body knows its wants that, often high
As a high cloud attendant on the sun,
Or small as the small globes of the dew,
Defy the trying of a host of men
Who cannot satisfy, might satisfy the sky
As easily, or cut the moon in two.

Further information: A number of lines from this poem were included in other poems: ‘To others than you’, published in Deaths and Entrances and ‘And death shall have no dominion’, published in Twenty-five Poems. Both were chosen to be included in Dylan’s Collected Poems.

When and where was it first published: New English Weekly, 18 May 1933 and Twenty-five Poems (1936), as the February 1936 revised version.

Where you can find it now: The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas, The New Centenary Edition, edited by John Goodby (2014), as the revised version, and Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print.

Excerpt:
And death shall have no dominion.
Man, with soul naked, shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon,
With the harmonious thunder of the sun;
When his bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
He shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though he fall mad he shall be sane,
And though he drown he shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost, love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.

Further information: The theme of this poem is immortality. Dylan changed the wording from Romans 6:9 to use in this poem. It has regular rhymed stanzas. This was Dylan’s first poem to be published in a London based journal. Revised in February 1936, it was published in Twenty-five Poems (1936) and Dylan’s Collected Poems (1952)

When and where it was first published: New English Weekly, 25 January 1934.

Where you can find it now:  Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print.

Excerpt:
Within the head revolved a little world
Where wheels, Confusing music, confused doubts,
Rolled down all images into the pits
Where half dead vanities were sleeping curled
Like cats, and lusts lay half hot in the cold.

Further information: This poem had the title, ‘Out of the pit’ when it was published.

When and where was it first published: Poetry (Chicago), August 1938 and The Map of Love (1939), as the 1938 revised version.

Where you can find it now: The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas, The New Centenary Edition, edited by John Goodby (2014), as the revised version, and Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Currently out of print.

Excerpt:
Not from this anger, anticlimax after
Refusal struck her face, a clap of laughter,
And smiles sucked out the humour from her offer,
Shall she receive a bellyful of stones,
Nor from surprise at what turned out
Wrong choice, later, in the honked night,
Shall sin amuse her limbs, and hands
Leap over the barbed lands.

Further information: The revised version of this poem, dated January 1938, (with a few extra edits) was published as ‘Not from this anger’ in The Map of Love (1939) 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:
The first ten years in school and park
Leapt like a ball from light to dark,
Bogies scared from landing and corner,
Leapt on the bed, but now I’ve sterner
Stuff inside, dole for no work’s
No turnip ghost now I’m no minor.

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:
Pass through twelve stages, reach the fifth
By retrograde moving from near death,
And puberty recoils at callow youth
Knowing such stuff as will confuse
That phantom in the loss, used to misuse,
Red rims, a little learning, and calf sense.