Farm, rented by Thomas's uncle and aunt, in which he spent summer holidays as a boy. Click on the picture icon to see a photograph of Thomas and his mother at Fern Hill (1952).

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Fern Hill (1946)

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     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
5       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.

10     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,
15     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
20     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,
25     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
30       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
35       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,
40         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
45         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
50       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.

Editor´s Comments

It would be hard to think of another poem quite like "Fern Hill," and yet its subject is absolutely commonplace. If you had to describe it the way television programs are described in the newspaper, you'd probably write something like, "Poet had a good time in childhood, later found out about getting old." That's true, but it's not "Fern Hill," either. So how does Dylan Thomas make something new out of a subject so old and familiar?

We might start with the idea of memory. It's what drives the poem, but as Dylan Thomas employs it, it's not a thing, like a simple snapshot of the past. Instead it's a process, and a rather complicated one at that. For one thing, the speaker is always in two places at once: on the one hand he's deep into the physical reality of the farm, the haystacks and daisies and apple trees. But on the other hand he's always separated from that reality by the very fact that he's remembering it. A child's experience is being replayed in the mind of an adult. On the simplest level, this double view is signalled by the fact that the poem is in the past tense. And those recurring phrases, "time let me," or "time allows," are there right from the start. But the sense that the past is being reconstructed, and so can't ever really be recaptured, is everywhere in the poem. For example, when the boy remembers hearing horses "Flashing into the dark," the child's experience of night sounds as both scary and wonderful is overwhelming. But then he wakes up, and the farm is,

          like a wanderer white
     With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
30       Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
         The sky gathered again
       And the sun grew round that very day.

Suddenly we're not in the mind of a child at all. This is a past which has already been interpreted, and interpreted as only an adult could. The passage is heavy with culture, with reading: the Bible, folklore, mythology, poetry. And the tension in the poem is right here, in this picture of memory as constructed, as something that reflects the concerns and anxieties of the present as much as it recalls the past. The speaker tries to get back to a world he's lost, and yet he can't let go of the present because it's the present that gives him his language.

Historical Considerations

The Welsh Tradition of Poetry

Poetry as Performance

The Poet´s Life and Work

Biography

The Poet's Craft

Critical Essays

• Stephen J. Boyd, "Secular Mysticism: Dylan Thomas's 'Fern Hill.'"
• Linda Tarte Holley, "Dylan Thomas's 'Fern Hill': The Breaking of the Circles."

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