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Fern Hill by Dylan Thomas is
an autobiographical poem in
which Thomas uses the memories
of childhood days in order to
explore the theme of journey
from innocence to experience.
The theme is based on William
Blake’s division the world
of experience and it is reinforced
through the use of Wordsworthian
double consciousness.
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The poem can be divided
into two parts: the
first three stanza are
related to the poets
experience as a child
when he uses to spend
his summer holidays
at his uncle’s
farm (Fern Hill, it
is in Wan sea in Wales)
but the last three stanzas
are about an awakening
in the child which signifies
the loss of the world
of innocence. At the
center of this loss
of the innocence are
the myths of fall of
the first human beings
(Adam and Eve). The
world of innocence (child)
as described in the
first three stanzas
is like the Garden of
Eden. This is a world
in which the child is
in complete union with
the nature. |
This world of fantasy offers
the child an Edenic bliss. The
way Thomas describes this world;
it appears to be timeless world
without sense of loss and decay.
In the third stanza the poet
slowly moves towards the transition
between the world of innocence
and the world of experience.
In the forth stanza the speaker’s
sleeping is a symbolic sleeping
which ends a flashing into the
dark. This flashing is a kind
of awakening as hinted by the
first line of the fourth stanza.
In this awakening the child
(speaker) initiates into the
world of maturity. “Sleeping”
in the poem is symbolic that
refers to the loss of innocence
that equates the Adam and Eve
who had slept after fall from
the Grace of God. This initiation
of the world of maturity entails
the loss of Edenic bliss, innocence,
grace and freedom. Moreover
poet loses creative imagination
and fantasies in which a union
with nature was possible.
In the last stanza the poet
once again contemplates on the
memoirs of his childhood but
this time the awareness, becomes
dominant. In the last line the
poet refers to his chained situation
in the world of experience.
Now he is in chain, green color
is withered now.
So, this poem is the journey
from childhood to manhood when
the manhood comes, the man suffers
from agony. Now I am not what
I was in the past. The use of
verb “song” hints
that the losses can be captured
through art in the last line
stanza.
Fern
Hill - Poem by Dylan Thomas
Now
as I was young and easy under
the apple boughs
About the lilting house and
happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his
eyes,
And honoured among wagons I
was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly
had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall
light.
And
as I was green and carefree,
famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing
as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once
only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman
and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on
the hills barked clear and cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.
All
the sun long it was running,
it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the
tunes from the chimneys, it
was air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple
stars
As I rode to sleep the owls
were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed
among stables, the night-jars
Flying with the ricks, and the
horses
Flashing into the dark.
And
then to awake, and the farm,
like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the
cock on his shoulder: it was
all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that
very day.
So it must have been after the
birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place,
the spellbound horses walking
warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.
And
honoured among foxes and pheasants
by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and
happy as the heart was long,
In the sun born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the
house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky
blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so
few and such morning songs
Before the children green and
golden
Follow him out of grace.
Nothing
I cared, in the lamb white days,
that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft
by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the
high fields
And wake to the farm forever
fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in
the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like
the sea.
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