Fern Hill--

Dylan Thomas
 Dylan Thomas
A Brief Biography

• Dylan Marlais Thomas was a Welsh poet and writer.

• Born: 27 October 1914, Uplands, United Kingdom
• His works include the poems "Do not go gentle into that
good night" and "And death shall have no dominion", as
well as the "play for voices" Under Milk Wood.
• Died: 9 November 1953, Saint Vincent's Catholic Medical
Center, New York, United States
 Fern Hill –Dylan Thomas
 SUMMARY
 Fern Hill" is six stanza of praising and then lamenting days the
speaker spent at Fern Hill as a youth and is fuelled about running
through the countryside.

 Throughout the poem, he talks about how happy he was as a

youngster and how oblivious he was that youth was passing, at the
end of the poem, the tone shifts dramatically from joy to sorrow an
grief.

 What was a carefree bliss for the speaker turns out to be a fleeting
joy that he ever can't recapture.
 CENTRAL IDEA(S)
 Youth- You're only young once, and all those other clichés.
 For the speaker of "Fern Hill," youth is everything it should be—joyful,
carefree, and oh so fleeting.
 However, although the speaker feels the wonders of youth as being
everlasting, adulthood is irreversible.
 Time in "Fern Hill" is almost like a character.
 Thomas personifies time throughout the poem, as something with immense
power.
 Initially, the speaker frolics among the meadows, but then time yanks the
young and carefree speaker out of his graceful youth and into ugly
adulthood
 STANZA 1

1Present tense-poem is about past. Young & free.

Allusion-apple-Eden

2Simile, happiness compared to intensity of

green colour
3 He is as happy as the sky with stars
4 Personification, childhood was a great time
5 Time captures the joys of childhood
 STANZA 1
6 Special to all. Allusion – Adam in Eden
7 Preposition “below”(digging up past
-“upon”
8 Enjambment-smooth trail of life when young
9Apples gleaming in the light rolling down a
hill – like a river
 [stanza 1: young and carefree]
 STANZA 2

 10 Well known to all

 11 personification-“happy yard”
 12 time in your life when you are young
 13 personification: allowed to be young once
 14 at the mercy of time to be young only once
 STANZA 2

 15-16
Alliteration. Engaged with the wilderness
among calves & foxes
 17Metaphor. Didn’t have to go to church – sees
God in nature.
 18 that ringing sound (church bells) seems to come
from the tiny stones at the bottoms of streams.
 [stanza 2: Carefree, time takes its course]
 STANZA 3
 19enjoying - outside all day. repetition "it was"
emphasises the fun
 20running in the tall-grown hay. Metaphor - smoke
from chimneys = music "tunes”.
 21air seems like a kind of water full of wonderful
things. “water” flows freely
 22fire is as green as the grass = surreal – shows
childhood is about vivid memories and not always
logical
 STANZA 3
23-24 rides (falls off) to sleep -as owls take flight, they
carry him to fly with them. Owls carry the night away.

25-27 All night. He can hear horses -imagery evokes light

gleaming on horses' hair, they retreat into their stable to
sleep. "blessed" religious undertones.

[stanza 3: still fun on the farm and nature is still alive at

night]
 STANZA 4

 28-29 Day returns. Dawn = simile - Day reappears - light

shines on it. Dew = farm gleams. Personifies - farm = a
traveller suddenly appearing after the night with a
rooster(farm begins with a rooster crowing at dawn).

 30 Biblical allusion implies - Fern Hill = Garden of

Eden, a paradise where a child feels at one with the
natural surroundings.
 STANZA 4

 31 sky - suggests the beginning of the world as it might

have been witnessed in Eden- as if he is witnessing the
creation of the sky.

 32-33 it's just another morning on the farm; the sun rises.
But as a child, even regular mornings felt as special as the
beginning of the world.
 STANZA 4

 34-35 blurs images from the farm with those of

Eden. Imagines the horses as the first horses in the
world walking out of the stables in the beginning of
creation.
 [stanza 4: day returns, farm is the garden of Eden]
 STANZA 5

 37-38 Still enjoying the farm. simile: “heart was

long” = big heart and full of happiness, echoes
"All the sun long" (L19). Continues allusion -
Garden of Eden and its metaphorical comparison
to Fern Hill.
 39 every day at Fern Hill was like the first day of
the world.
 STANZA 5

 41 last three stressed syllables capture a feeling of elation.

 Hyperbolic image. Alliteration - adds to feeling of
exaggerated joy.
 42-45 personified time. "trades"=skilled work, here "sky
blue trades" suggests imaginative things that children get
up to – and didn’t realise how time would pass so
quickly.
 STANZA 5

 43 t urning of the planet - cycles of night and

day, is the music or "tune" of time. Time only
allows a "few morning songs." "morning songs“
 = metaphor for childhood, which, if a whole life
is compared to a day, is like the morning.
 STANZA 5
 44-45 After a brief childhood he loses his grace (closeness
to God) –
 Like Adam and Eve. He has to "Follow" time out of
childhood. Children give up their "green and golden"
state, their innocence and joy.
 [Stanza 5: Still enjoying childhood but hints of it coming
to a close]
 STANZA 6
 Final stanza
 - strong shift in tone, speaker goes from the
ecstatic joy of the previous stanzas to a
devastating lament for the end of childhood and
innocence.

 46 metaphor -Lambs, and their white wool,

symbolize innocence in Christianity.
 STANZA 6

 47 rip to the "loft" ( attic full of birds), suggests initiation that

leads the speaker into the world of adulthood (sexual
experience/secret meeting) Being led by the shadow of the
hand - figurative.

 50-51 Previously the owls carried the farm away at night and
it returned at dawn. Now, it doesn't return. The farm has
"forever fled." All the children are gone. The speaker wakes up
one morning and all the joy has been sucked out of the world.
 STANZA 6

 52-54 offers a lamentation for the end of childhood.

 52from line 1, 13&14 - Combing these two phrases = gist

of the poem: childhood was great but short.
 STANZA 6

 53 Speaker’s present feelings - still "green,“ (inexperienced),

but "dying." He has to confront mortality, the reality of an
eventual death. Similarly Adam and Eve- gained knowledge of
death. Speaker - confronting the loss of innocence and the
reality of death.
 STANZA 6

 metaphorical "chains“ - experienced as a form of imprisonment.

 If childhood = "easy" and "heedless," feeling like a "prince," of being

at one with the natural world then adulthood = opposite of these,
period of difficulty, self-consciousness, humiliation and isolation
from the world.
 Image of the sea in chains, singing by thrashing its waves. Metaphor
-this image suggests that even though time forced the speaker to
grow up, the speaker's free and "lilting" spirit never fully lets go of
childhood.
ESSAY QUESTION:
In the poem ‘Fern Hill’, colour is symbolic in the childhood of the poet/speaker. In
an essay of 250-300 words, discuss the symbolism of colour in the poem
CONTEXTUAL QUESTIONS:
1. Describe the tone in the first four stanzas. (2)
2. Discuss the shift in tone. (3)
3. Discuss the poet’s idea of time . (3)
4. What does this poem suggest about Thomas’ view of the relationship between
humankind and Nature? (3)