‘A Dry Prophet’ (1967) Inspired by the character of R.S. Thomas, who stayed with Watkins in Gower, and gave the address at Watkins’s Memorial Service.

‘Rhadamanthus and the New Soul’ (1967) A conversation between Rhadamanthus, the judge of the dead (Stanzas 1, 3, 5, 7), and a new soul in that realm (Stanzas 2, 4, 6), who has witnessed the horrors of the twentieth century.

Watkins wrote in his notebook (22 February 1966): ‘Rhadamanthus. All I know is that this is a permanent poem. I can’t exhaust its meaning or isolate one completely.’

The Breaking of the Wave (1979) Most of the poems in this collection are undated.

Rarely Published and Unpublished Poems ‘True Lovers’ (1926) Written when Watkins was nineteen, in February 1926, and published in the London Mercury in May 1929 – just before his decision no longer to publish.

‘Sonnet of Resurrection’ (7) Watkins originally wrote eight ‘Sonnets of Resurrection’, six of which were published in The Lady with the Unicorn: ‘Four Sonnets of Resurrection’, ‘The Sinner’ and ‘The Necklace of Stones.’ This one exists in a single draft in the British Library (BL MS 54159), and has not previously been published. It is one of the very few poems that treats directly of the experience he underwent in 1928/9.

‘Untitled’ A single undated draft, previously unpublished; not in a finished form. Probably written in 1956, when Watkins revisited Nuremberg after the war, on a travelling scholarship.

‘Parable Winkle’ (1964) First published in Temenos 8, London, 1987. An example of Watkins’s light verse, sent from America in 1964 to his godson Richard Hamburger, who ‘was in hospital for nine months, encased in plaster from his feet to his chest’. Michael Hamburger, Richard’s father, wrote: ‘To me, Vernon’s humanity – attested here

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