Poetry explication techniques and literary analysis

Fern Hill (Dylan Thomas)

The "Poetry Explications" handout from UNC states that a poetry explication is a "relatively short analysis which describes the possible meanings and relationship of the words, images, and other small units that make up a poem."

The speaker in "Fern Hill" dramatically embraces memories from his childhood days at his uncle's farm, when the world was innocent; the second part brings out the speaker's loss of innocence and transition into manhood. This explication will identify and critique Thomas' tone, imagery (including metaphors) and expressive language (as it contributes to the power of the poem). ("Fern Hill" uses 6 verse paragraphs; there are 9 lines in each paragraph.)

"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 honored 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…"

He uses color imagery effectively in this stanza; grass is green so we know the speaker was happy in his youth. Youth is considered a time of golden moments that will never occur again; in his youth ("below a time") he was lord of all he observed, he was in control the metaphor "down the rivers of windfall light" brings the reader into the movement of time.

"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…"

The speaker dramatizes time by personifying it; the tone is re-polished with the repeat use of "green and golden" (from the first verse); rivers from the first verse become "streams" in the second verse but streams are "holy" reflecting the sincerity of the speaker's spirituality. Water over pebbles is like church bells calling him to worship. Imagery connects nature ("foxes…barked clear and cold") with the nurturing of domesticity as herdsman / shepherd (a biblical allusion).

"All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay / fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimney, 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 nightjars / flying with the ricks, and the horses / flashing into the dark…"

The speaker is symbolically being called away from his timeless youth by the eerie hooting of owls; he addressed "time" again (it is his master, his leader) through the image of "all the moon long" and "all the sun long"; in the 1st verse the night sky is "dingle starry"; but he is moving on from his childhood and illustrates that through "simple stars" and that the horses are "flashing into the dark" (into the unknown of adulthood perhaps).

"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…"

For the 4th time the image presented by "green" appears; this time the speaker emphasizes he is reaching maturity ("spellbound horses" unlocked from their "green" stable -- whinnying may suggest moving time away from previous existence [youth]) because he recognizes the metaphor of a new day (each new day he is alive -- a new Garden of Eden -- is like Creation in the Old Testament). The imagery of "shining" and "praise" dramatize an older person's is gracious in giving to life.

"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…"

Earlier the speaker posited that the sun is just young once, but in this verse the sun is born "over and over" (imagery reflects the near-monotony / redundancy of aging and the passage of time); the speaker characterizes the passage of time (and the confusion brought on by aging) by saying he "ran heedless" (all is not as it should be in this age).

"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 / up to 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…"