Twenty-Five Poems (1936)

Published two years after his first collection, Dylan again mined his notebooks for Twenty-Five Poems.

The first proof Dylan sent to Dent’s as a manuscript was entitled Twenty-Three Poems, and other proposed titles included Poems in Sequence and Poems in Progress. The first 750 copies sold quickly and three more impressions were produced, making it one of the most successful poetry books of the 1930s.

All these poems are included in the current edition of Dylan Thomas’ Collected Poems.

I, in my intricate image
This bread I break
Incarnate devil
Today, this insect
The seed-at-zero
Shall gods be said
Here in this spring
Do you not father me
Out of the sighs
Hold hard, these ancient minutes
Was there a time
Now
Why east wind chills
A grief ago
How soon the servant sun
Ears in the turrets hear
Foster the light
The hand that signed the paper
Should lanterns shine
I have longed to move away
Find meat on bones
Grief thief of time
And death shall have no dominion
Then was my neophyte
Altarwise by owl-light