Quotes from Collected Poems

“And I rose
In rainy autumn
And walked abroad in a shower of all my days...”
― Dylan Thomas, quote from Collected Poems

“They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.”
― Dylan Thomas, quote from Collected Poems

“Especially when the October wind
With frosty fingers punishes my hair,
Caught by the crabbing sun I walk on fire
And cast a shadow crab upon the land,
By the sea's side, hearing the noise of birds,
Hearing the raven cough in winter sticks,
My busy heart who shudders as she talks
Sheds the syllabic blood and drains her words.”
― Dylan Thomas, quote from Collected Poems

“These are but dreaming men. Breathe, and they fade.”
― Dylan Thomas, quote from Collected Poems

“Love drips & gathers,
but the fallen blood
Shall calm her sores..."
-Thomas, The Force that through the green fuse drives the flower.”
― Dylan Thomas, quote from Collected Poems

“On No Work of Words

On no work of words now for three lean months in the bloody
Belly of the rich year and the big purse of my body
I bitterly take to task my poverty and craft:

To take to give is all, return what is hungrily given
Puffing the pounds of manna up through the dew to heaven,
The lovely gift of the gab bangs back on a blind shaft.

To lift to leave from the treasures of man is pleasing death
That will rake at last all currencies of the marked breath
And count the taken, forsaken mysteries in a bad dark.

To surrender now is to pay the expensive ogre twice.
Ancient woods of my blood, dash down to the nut of the seas
If I take to burn or return this world which is each man's work.”
― Dylan Thomas, quote from Collected Poems

“This world is half the devil's and my own, / Daft with the drug that's smoking in a girl / And curling round the bud that forks her eye.”
― Dylan Thomas, quote from Collected Poems

“There shall be corals in your beds,
There shall be serpents in your tides,
Till all our sea-faiths die.”
― Dylan Thomas, quote from Collected Poems

“My birthday began with the water-
Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name
Above the farms and the white horses
And I rose
In rainy autumn
And walked abroad in a shower of all my days.”
― Dylan Thomas, quote from Collected Poems

“A worm tells summer better than the clock,
The slug's a living calendar of days;
What shall it tell me if a timeless insect
Says the world wears away?”
― Dylan Thomas, quote from Collected Poems

“WHERE ONCE THE WATERS ON YOUR FACE


Where once the waters of your face
Spun to my screws, your dry ghost blows,
The dead turns up its eye;
Where once the mermen through your ice
Pushed up their hair, the dry wind steers
Through salt and root and roe.

Where once your green knots sank their splice
Into the tided cord, there goes
The green unraveller,
His scissors oiled, his knife hung loose
To cut the channels at their source
And lay the wet fruits low.

Invisible, your clocking tides
Break on the lovebeds of the weeds;
The weed of love’s left dry;
There round about your stones the shades
Of children go who, from their voids,
Cry to the dolphined sea.

Dry as a tomb, your coloured lids
Shall not be latched while magic glides
Sage on the earth and sky;
There shall be corals in your beds,
There shall be serpents in your tides,
Till all our sea-faiths die.”
― Dylan Thomas, quote from Collected Poems

“Which is the world? Of our two sleepings, which / Shall fall awake when cures and their itch / Raise up this red-eyed earth?”
― Dylan Thomas, quote from Collected Poems

“Poem in October"

It was my thirtieth year to heaven
Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood
And the mussel pooled and the heron
Priested shore
The morning beckon
With water praying and call of seagull and rook
And the knock of sailing boats on the net webbed wall
Myself to set foot
That second
In the still sleeping town and set forth.

My birthday began with the water-
Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name
Above the farms and the white horses
And I rose
In rainy autumn
And walked abroad in a shower of all my days.
High tide and the heron dived when I took the road
Over the border
And the gates
Of the town closed as the town awoke.

A springful of larks in a rolling
Cloud and the roadside bushes brimming with whistling
Blackbirds and the sun of October
Summery
On the hill's shoulder,
Here were fond climates and sweet singers suddenly
Come in the morning where I wandered and listened
To the rain wringing
Wind blow cold
In the wood faraway under me.

Pale rain over the dwindling harbour
And over the sea wet church the size of a snail
With its horns through mist and the castle
Brown as owls
But all the gardens
Of spring and summer were blooming in the tall tales
Beyond the border and under the lark full cloud.
There could I marvel
My birthday
Away but the weather turned around.

It turned away from the blithe country
And down the other air and the blue altered sky
Streamed again a wonder of summer
With apples
Pears and red currants
And I saw in the turning so clearly a child's
Forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother
Through the parables
Of sun light
And the legends of the green chapels

And the twice told fields of infancy
That his tears burned my cheeks and his heart moved in mine.
These were the woods the river and sea
Where a boy
In the listening
Summertime of the dead whispered the truth of his joy
To the trees and the stones and the fish in the tide.
And the mystery
Sang alive
Still in the water and singingbirds.

And there could I marvel my birthday
Away but the weather turned around. And the true
Joy of the long dead child sang burning
In the sun.
It was my thirtieth
Year to heaven stood there then in the summer noon
Though the town below lay leaved with October blood.
O may my heart's truth
Still be sung
On this high hill in a year's turning.”
― Dylan Thomas, quote from Collected Poems

“And time cast forth my mortal creature To drift or drown upon the seas Acquainted with the salt adventure Of tides that never touch the shores. I who was rich was made the richer By sipping at the vine of days.”
― Dylan Thomas, quote from Collected Poems

“The dream has sucked the sleeper of his faith”
― Dylan Thomas, quote from Collected Poems

“Was there a time when dancers with their fiddles
In children's circuses could stay their troubles?
There was a time they could cry over books,
But time has set its maggot on their track.
Under the arc of the sky they are unsafe.
What's never known is safest in this life.
Under the skysigns they have no arms
Have cleanest hands, and, as the heartless ghost
Alone's unhurt, so the blind man sees best.”
― Dylan Thomas, quote from Collected Poems

“In my craft or sullen art Exercised in the still night When only the moon rages And the lovers lie abed With all their griefs in their arms, I labour by singing light Not for ambition or bread Or the strut and trade of charms On the ivory stages But for the common wages Of their most secret heart. Not for the proud man apart From the raging moon I write On these spindrift pages Nor for the towering dead With their nightingales and psalms But for the lovers, their arms Round the griefs of the ages, Who pay no praise or wages Nor heed my craft or art.”
― Dylan Thomas, quote from Collected Poems

“Speak, then, o body, shout aloud, And break my only mind from chains To go where ploughing’s ended.”
― Dylan Thomas, quote from Collected Poems

“And the whole pain flows open and I die.”
― Dylan Thomas, quote from Collected Poems

“This is the world: the lying likeness of Our strips of stuff that tatter as we move Loving and being loth; The dream that kicks the buried from their sack And lets their trash be honoured as the quick. This is the world. Have faith.”
― Dylan Thomas, quote from Collected Poems

“Lie still, sleep becalmed, hide the mouth in the throat, or we shall obey, and ride with you through the drowned.”
― Dylan Thomas, quote from Collected Poems

“The ball I threw while playing in the park has not yet reached the ground.”
― Dylan Thomas, quote from Collected Poems

“To surrender now is to pay the expensive ogre twice. Ancient woods of my blood, dash down to the nut of the seas if I take to burn or return this world which is each man's work.”
― Dylan Thomas, quote from Collected Poems

“And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.”
― Dylan Thomas, quote from Collected Poems

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