Poem Analysis: Fern Hill By Dylan Thomas

Fern Hill Explication

Most people of today would agree that they would wish to be younger again. Fern Hill by Dylan Thomas, exemplifies this feeling of wishing to return to our days of youth. The poem itself is six stanzas long and is lyrical in structure. The speaker is older and is looking back on his life where he spent his childhood on a farm. He harkens back to how he misses his days of youth and encourages others to enjoy their youth while it lasts.

The first stanza opens up with saying how the speaker was young and did not have a care in the world. The first line talks about him relaxing under an apple bough, which is an apple tree. He also goes on to explain in line two that he is as “happy as the grass was green” (2), which

means his happiness was absolute. Lines three, four, and five continue to set the scene. Line three depicts a starry night, and line four uses personification to describe time. In line five it gives time eyes, which can be implied watch the speaker when he was young and carefree. In line six the speaker goes on declaring himself a prince, which also symbolizes power in youth. Up to lines seven through nine, the speaker describes the lands which he had control over “And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves, Trail with daisies and barley, Down the rivers of the windfall light.” (7, 8, 9), which in reality are just trees, rivers, and barley. The point of these lines are that it describes him as a young prince who has everything he could possibly, and not have a care in the world. Youth makes the speaker feel powerful and untouchable.
Stanza two goes continues explaining how happy the narrator was as a child. Line ten repeats that the speaker is “green” and carefree. Personification is also used in line eleven, where the speaker describes the yard as happy. Youth is continually described as a very joyful experience, and one of very little responsibilities. However in line twelve it is said that “In the sun that is young once only,” which hints that the youth of the speaker will not last forever. Line thirteen brings time back, as time is personified again through its capitalization. Time is letting the narrator play and enjoy being young, but as line fourteen states: “Golden in the mercy of his means,” (14). This means time is only allowing the speaker to be young out of mercy and eventually, his youth will run out. In the next line there continues to be more repetition. Green and gold continue to appear in line fifteen. It says he was a “huntsman and herdsman” which shows how he had control over all the animals on the farm he was on. Line sixteen shows how much of a master over all the animals he was. Then in lines seventeen and eighteen, the speaker describes the landscape as holy, “In the pebbles of the holy streams.” (18), and holds it to a high standard. Overall the second stanza highlights how empowering youth made the narrator feel.
The poem puts emphasis on how great the speakers youth was.

Stanza three explains what life was like at the farm he lived on, as the previous stanzas have. Line twenty describes the landscape and how beautiful it is. It describes it as Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air,” (20). Lines twenty one through twenty three use more imagery to describe the landscape. They use words such as “lovely and watery” (21) to show how pleasant it was to gaze upon the land. The word “And” is also repeated in the beginning of each of these lines which creates suspense. They also show repetition by repeating words such as “green” and it brings up the starry night again. Line twenty four talks about owls and how they are starting to come out. The day is starting to end and there is still beauty in everything. Now night has begun and all the things that made the day happy and carefree are starting to disappear. Lines twenty five through twenty seven use imagery to show that the moon is appearing and the horses and everything else is disappearing into the night. This begins to show that the youth the speaker is experiencing is starting to

fade.
Stanza four starts suddenly with the narrator waking up with line twenty eight saying “And then to awake,” (28). The morning is described positively in line twenty nine, and also personifies the farm by giving it a “shoulder” where a rooster is. Line thirty uses allusion by using the name Adam, which is in the Bible from the story of Adam and Eve. Line’s thirty one and thirty two describe the rising sun and how it rose in the sky “The sky gathered again, And the sun grew round that very day.” (31, 32). The farm is still described as being an amazing place to live, but this was only when the speaker was young. All this happiness could come to an end when he loses his youthfulness. Lines thirty three through thirty six allude to Bible even more such as in line thirty three. It shows how the sun rising is comparable to when God created the world, and made there be light. Lines thirty four and thirty five describe the horses leaving their stables. The stables themselves are described as whinnying however, which personifies them as horses. Stanza four shows that the morning is just as beautiful as the other times, and how much the speaker misses his time as a child on the farm.
The speaker continues to reminisce in stanza five.

Line thirty seven creates another personification by giving the house emotions: “And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house” (37). Everything is still happy and carefree in the world of the narrator. He is happy under the new day in line thirty eight. In line thirty nine he shows how little attention he paid at the time to what he had. “In the sun born over and over,” (39). Line forty uses the word “heedless” to show how oblivious he was to the easy and happy lifestyle he had when he was young. Line forty two explains how he did not care at the time, “And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows” (42), because he felt that those days would last forever. Line forty three uses the words “so few” to show how the narrator was unaware at the limited time of his youth, and that it would have inevitably come to an end. In line forty four the words “green” and “golden” are used once again. Green and gold represent youth and something being of

value.