Dylan Thomas (27 October 1914 – 9 November 1953 / Swansea / Wales)

''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?''

''It's that—the thought of the few, simple things we want and the knowledge that we're going to get them in spite of you know Who and His spites and tempers—that keeps us living I think.''

''Hold hard, my county darlings, for a hawk descends,
Golden Glamorgan straightens, to the falling birds.
Your sport is summer as the spring runs angrily.''

''I know we're not saints or virgins or lunatics; we know all the lust and lavatory jokes, and most of the dirty people; we can catch buses and count our change and cross the roads and talk real sentences. But our innocence goes awfully deep, and our discreditable secret is that we don't know anything at all, and our horrid inner secret is that we don't care that we don't.''

''Time, in a folly's rider, like a county man
Over the vault of ridings with his hound at heel,
Drives forth my men, my children from the hanging south.''

''And the child not caring to whom he climbs his prayer
Shall drown in a grief as deep as his made grave,
And mark the dark eyed wave, through the eyes of sleep,
Dragging him up the stairs to one who lies dead.''

''No
Praise that the spring time is all
Gabriel and radiant shrubbery as the morning grows joyful''

''The conversation of prayers about to be said
Turns on the quick and the dead....''

''My arising prodigal
Sun the father his quiver full of the infants of pure fire ...''

''And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.''