AN historic pub said to have inspired the works of poet Dylan Thomas recently went up for auction. It was bought by Men Behaving Badly star Neil Morrissey.

Thomas would have known all about bad behaviour. He is supposed to have sat in a corner of this particular hostelry during the 1940s and early 50s, jotting down the punters' comments in a notebook. I would imagine this was in between downing copious amounts of drink.

It's a wonder he could see the page.

I once called at Brown's Hotel in Laugharne, west Wales. There was nothing remarkable about it, really. Like so many things in life, the expectation never fulfilled the promise.

It just seemed very ordinary, rather drab in an austere Welsh sort of way... a mixture of beer, stale cigarette smoke and chapel.

You might say it was a typically Celtic compromise between sin and retribution.

Dylan Thomas died in 1953 after downing 18 double whiskies.

His last words were said to have been: "I suppose this must be some sort of record."

A rare example of the poet's capacity for understatement, perhaps.

Then there was his famous wooden hut on the banks of the estuary where he did most of his writing. A few years ago, so they said, it was just as the poet had left it. There were newspapers scattered about, a book left open and even a few cigarette ends in an ashtray.

Such a pity someone had tidied it up when I called. Yes, it was still fascinating, but no longer had that lived-in feel. Still, it was quite something to gaze out of the very same window above the desk upon which he had written Under Milk Wood.

This country no longer honours poets. Once they were messengers, soothsayers and bards. Their utterances swam like fish in the current of everyday life.

But in a Britain that spins ever faster, there seems to be no room any more for the creator of the reflective and considered thought.

It's another manifestation of the spiritual impoverishment of these times. Yet there is not a county in Great Britain that does not have some association with a great wordsmith or two.

Closer to home, Herefordshire, of course, was the spiritual home of the Dymock poets. Ledbury's John Masefield often alluded to this part of the Midlands in his writings and nature poet W H Davies would have known the Faithful City of Worcester very well indeed.

There are a number of references to Worcestershire in his classic Autobiography Of A Supertramp.

Meanwhile, in nearby Gloucestershire, the railway station of Adlestrop is eulogised and rendered immortal by Edward Thomas.

Even Dr Beeching could not sideline this connection...

I have this habit of seeking out the lives of long-dead people - insatiably curious, you see - and the doomed Thomas has not avoided my gaze. His story is one that wrenches at the heart strings.

Thomas was a melancholic character who came to poetry rather late. He was well into his 30s, and worn out after years of hack writing, when a higher muse called.

Tragically, just as recognition beckoned, his time on Earth was running out.

In 1914, Thomas's poetry came in a rush - as if to meet another deadline - and in just two years, he wrote a lifetime of poems.

Then he enlisted and was soon on active service in France.

He was fated to spend one last Christmas - 1916 - with his family.

On the eve of his recall to his regiment, he and his wife Helen sat up all night talking about their love for each other and of all the marvellous times they had shared.

In the morning he caught the train and left for the front.

Three weeks' later, on April 9, 1917, Thomas was killed at his observation post near Beaurains by a stray shell during the opening bombardment of the Battle of Arras. He is buried in the military cemetery at Agny.

I visited Thomas' grave a few years ago, but have yet to locate the last resting place of W H Davies, who is buried at Watledge, a hamlet near Nailsworth, Gloucestershire. Perhaps this will be subject of an expedition at some stage in the future.

Returning to Herefordshire's John Masefield, his creative scope also encompassed works of prose.

For example, anyone interested in gaining an impression of the latter stages of the Somme battles could do a lot worse than reading his On The Old Front Line.

Masefield, with his poet's eye, could convey images of mud and slaughter, life and death, hopes won and hopes dashed better than most. It's probably long out of print now, but a copy probably lurks in the corner of a bookshop in nearby Hay-on-Wye.

You never know your luck. There can't be a volume on Earth that has not passed through the town of books at some stage or other.

Sadly, the heart and romance seem to have gone from poetry these days. When I say that, I don't mean "romance" in the usual meaning of the word. I'm talking about a kind of sensitivity and musicality that dwells in the recesses of everyone's soul.

Take the genre of nature poetry - no one seems to be writing about the natural world anymore.

I suppose this is about fashion and street cred. It's not in keeping with the computer age to wax lyrically about a dragonfly or a wood anemone peeping through the lichens - heavens no, I daresay these times are far too cynical and practical for such maudlin frivolity.

And I also doubt whether there are many who take W H Davies' advice to occasionally stand and stare. Nevertheless, his best-known poem - Leisure - has recently been used as the vehicle for a television advert.

But the Welsh dreamer's work was read by someone with a Scottish accent, for heaven's sake. What next? Robert Burns being delivered by a member of the EastEnders cast? Or perhaps Shakespeare in broad Geordie?

Dylan Thomas' early death was a talented life cut short, a sacrifice on the altar of the false god of liquid excess. The world of art may be littered with premature exits, but what-could-have-been wins no accolades.

Fame may indeed be enduring, but death is forever. There is nothing remotely desirable about the career you never knew about. Too many tortured souls have forgotten that there's no point in not being around to savour the drama and poignancy of ego's ultimate statement.

The main thing is, though, that the legacy of a great artist can sometimes be preserved in physical form. And the Browns Hotel in faraway Laugharne is probably such a case, where the luxury of association is almost as good as having the great man still with us.

We may not prize poetry like we once used to, but I suspect that Thomas would have been philosophical about the vagaries of public fashion and taste.

And, if a miracle could be performed, and he could somehow be brought back to us, no doubt he would still take to his heart the present residents of this poetry-phobic world that he might recognise as Llareggub...