And the sun long it was running. It was lovely the day friends high as the house, the tunes from the chimney, it was air and playing lovely and water and fire green as grass
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Fern Hill Summary & Analysis
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Dylan Thomas based his 1945 poem "Fern Hill" on childhood experiences at his aunt's farm in Wales, where he grew up. The poem is filled with intensely lyrical language and rich metaphorical descriptions that capture the excitement and joy of playing outside as a child and feeling in harmony with the natural world. The result is a hymn to the wonder and grace of childhood and the pain of its eventual loss.
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“Fern Hill” Summary
Well, when I was young and relaxed under the branches of the apple trees that surrounded the happy house, and my happiness was as vivid as the intense green of the grass—as vivid as the night's stars over the valley's trees—time himself let me live, call out, and climb, watching as I thrived and flourished in the best days of my life. I was highly respected among the wagons and was the prince of the local towns full of apple orchards. Back then, I was like a king who made the trees and their leaves spread trails of daisy flowers and barley grass on the fields behind them, where the apples blown down by the wind were like a river of light.
And I was young, inexperienced, and had no responsibilities, I was a celebrity around the barns and in the joyful yard, and I sang all over the farm because it felt like home. Under the sun, which is young only once, time allowed me to play and feel golden—at least as far as his mercy and resources allowed. Young, inexperienced, and thriving, I was like a hunter or shepherd. When I blew my trumpet the young cows sang back to me and foxes on the nearby hill barked sharply. The sabbath—the holy day—seemed to ring out slowly from the pebbles in the streams, which seemed holy as well.
I'd spend the whole, lovely day running about. Farmers had stacks of hay as high as the house's roof, and the smoke from the chimneys was like a song. The days were full of fresh air and play, beautiful and flowing. The fire was as green as the grass. Every night under the stars I didn't just fall to sleep, I rode to sleep, and the owls seemed to carry the farm away with them as they took flight. All the moonlit night I could hear the blessed nightjars—nocturnal birds—near the horse stables, flying around the stacks of hay. Light gleamed on the horses' hair before they disappeared into darkness.
And then I would wake up. The farm seemed to return in that moment, like a wandering person shining with morning dew, a rooster on his shoulder. Everything was shining, in fact; it was like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The sky returned and the sun rose again, right then and there. This is what it must have been like when God created the world, making the first light over the spinning earth. The first horses would have been mesmerized by what had happened, walking out of their green stables, which were full of their neighing, and into the warmth, into the fields where everything was praising God.
I was also a celebrity among the foxes and the pheasants (a type of bird) near the happy house under the newly-formed clouds. My heart was filled with happiness, in the light of that sun that rose again and again. I ran without a care, all my desires running with me between the tall stacks of hay. And I didn't care at all—as I went about my tasks, which were blue as the sky—that time, with all his beautiful music, doesn't allow people to have very many songs of childhood. Soon, children, inexperienced and full of joy, have to follow time out of their innocence.
But I didn't care, in those days when I was innocent as a lamb, that time would lead me to the attic that was full of swallows (a type of bird), guiding me by my hand's shadow—all in the light of the moon that seems to keep rising and rising. And I didn't care that as I went to sleep I would hear time flying over the fields, and that when I woke up the farm would be gone and there would be no more children. Oh! When I was young and happy in the short childhood that I was granted, time embraced me, still young and inexperienced but already dying, even though