Dylan Thomas's "Fern Hill": Youth, Time, and Memory

Introduction: Understanding Dylan Thomas

Understanding a poem is, first and foremost, a matter of understanding the poet. A poet's individual choice of words, the emotions that grab the reader, the connection forged, and the lasting emotional message delivered can be achieved through a number of techniques. But the poet who achieves a lasting memory in the minds and hearts of readers is one who approached the pen and ink from a radically different perspective — or with an emotional charge to his life that others find not only fascinating, but enviable. Such is the case of Dylan Thomas, a Welshman with a well-documented history of avid drinking, little self-discipline, and a penchant for over-indulgence that led him to an early grave.

Thomas's Early Influences and Literary Style

As a young child, Thomas loved the written word. He began writing his first poems at age eight or nine, while his attention was fixed on familiar nursery rhymes. Of his writing and his love of early childhood rhymes, Dylan wrote the following to an American admirer:

"The first poems I knew were nursery rhymes, and before I could read them for myself I had come to love just the words of them, the words alone. What the words stood for, symbolized, or meant was of very secondary importance — what mattered was the very sound of them as I heard them for the first time on the lips of the remote and quite incomprehensible grown-ups who seemed, for some reason, to be living in my world. And those words were, to me, as the notes of bells, the sounds of musical instruments, the noises of wind, sea, and rain, the rattle of milk carts, the clapping of hooves on cobbles, the fingering of branches on a window pane, might be to someone deaf from birth, who has miraculously found his hearing." (Mondragon, 2004)

This first love was not far removed from his poem "Fern Hill" and can be seen in the shades of that famous work. The smooth meter and ambient rhyming scheme point the reader in the direction of nursery rhymes. At a time when other writers, such as William Carlos Williams, were experimenting with free verse and word structures that resembled nothing like the poetry that had come before, Thomas maintained a more traditional and romantic approach. Williams and other modern poets of the same era attempted to create utterly new styles in poetry, having been influenced by the turn of the twentieth century with all its expectations of newness and innovation.

Thomas could more appropriately be called the Robert Frost of the Welsh isles. Influenced by traditional childhood literature and possessing a love for nature, these structures and themes often appeared in his works, inspiring readers to find beauty in simple landscapes and to relate their own worlds to the green hills and crisp breezes that were part of Thomas's childhood.

Overview of Fern Hill

"Fern Hill" is a beautiful look back at the time when life — like the green hills in springtime — is fresh. Thomas used the metaphor of spring and newly mown hay to represent his remembrance of youth. The imagery supports the metaphor: Thomas describes a Welsh country farm as though viewed from the back of a wagon sitting just outside the family barn. He chose this setting as an emotional benchmark. Just as smells, sounds, and images are part of his memory, so too is his picture of youth, full of fresh sights, sounds, hopes, and dreams. However, neither the poem nor the reader is permitted to remain in that place of fresh greenness — no more than childhood hope can last. In the final lines, Thomas turns the poem back to the reality of time, and the reader is left with a note of sorrow as they consider the poet's waning years.

First Stanza: The Kingdom of Childhood

The following images are taken directly from the poem and evaluated in order to uncover Thomas's purpose in this classic work.

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

Thomas uses this setting to establish both the time and the emotions of his youth. As a child in the countryside, he romped under the apple tree boughs, remembering the scent of ripening apples. While nature turned slowly around him, so did the days of his youth, which allowed him the time to climb trees, lie in the green grass — as happy in his youth as the grass was green — and contemplate the stars above the "dingle," the small hollow in which his house sat.

Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns

Thomas looks back and sees these days as the pinnacle of his memory. Just as the "hey day" was the high point of the farming season — when farmers brought in the hay for market — so were the days when Thomas played on the family wagon. His memory of these times elevates him, at least in his own recollection, to the level of prince, or leader of the entire town.

And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.

The key to these verses lies in the language of leadership and sovereignty — of ruling and reigning. He was the king of his day, the prince of the apple towns. Even the trees and leaves made a trail behind him as he walked through the hillsides. That time of youth was the day of his highest achievement.

References

Mondragon, Brenda. Dylan Marlais Thomas. Neurotic Poets. 2004. Accessed 17 April 2004. Website: http://www.neuroticpoets.com/thomas/

Thomas, Dylan. Fern Hill. BigEye.com. 2002. Accessed 17 April 2004. Website: