Dylan Thomas - Fern Hill

[pb]

I'd like to start a discussion on Dylan Thomas' Fern Hill, tyhough I really should be doing some work instead. IMO, this is his best work, especially when one hears him read it aloud, and exactly the kind of sentiment I aspire to convey in writing poetry, which for me is often an act of revisiting the past. Here it is then:

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 heyday 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.

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.

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
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,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
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
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.

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,

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
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.


Such a fabulous poem, I just read it again! Always brings a tear to my eye. Note the rhythm in the final line which mimics the waves of the sea....

Your thoughts.

[Bombadil]

One of favorite poets, easily, though this is my first read of Fern Hill. Reminds me, on first read, very much of The Sally Gardens, by Yeats. The same singing sadness. A lot to take in and more to comment on...soon.

Thanks for throwing this up for discussion.

--A.S.

[cameron]

Hi pb

Thanks for posting this.

Personally I have always had a problem with Dylan Thomas. I find that he is rather "inebriated by the exuberance of his own verbosity". Call me old-fashioned, but I do like my poems to be about something and I find that so many of his poems are only about the sound of the words themselves. Like Swinburne, he is full of music but not full of sense.

The beauty with poets like Larkin or Betjeman is that their subject matter is always crystal clear whereas Dylan Thomas is a gob-shite. (However, I have always liked In My Craft or Sullen Art and, of course, Under Milk Wood)

I haven't read Fern Hill for a long time and I must admit that it is quite good. However, I do find it rather repetitive and a tad too long.

Cheers
Cam

[Bombadil]

"inebriated by the exuberance of his own verbosity"

Ouch. Sounds a bit like Bon Scott.

[Sean Kinsella]

Being from Swansea, like Thomas himself, this is one of my favourite poems, and the last two lines are some of the best ever written. But I agree that some of what Dylan wrote can sometimes be indecipherable at best. If you can still get it, I can recommend 'Collected Poems'. Its edited by some professor from the University of Wales (I can't remember his name now, the books at my parents home in Swansea), but its very good. If it's out of print it's worth trawling the secondhand bookshops for.

BEST REGARDS
SEAN KINSELLA

[taliesin_the_poet]

Greetings!

Yes, Dylan Thomas was inebriated on his own verbosity - but that, I think, is part of his charm. Why, when you have Milk Wood "limping
invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing
sea", can't you have it "running down to the shoreline". It's simple, it's immediate, it's pruned-to-the-wood. But it's no good, because it is as artistic as a multi-storey car park!

My poetry tends to the same verbosity - not that I can pretend to have Thomas' genius - because I love the language, the lilting cadence of rhyme. The problem, of course, is when the rhyme comes without meaning, or so overwhelms the reader, the narrator or the listener, that all meaning is lost. Yes that would be a thing of beauty in and of itself, but as far as I am concerned, a poem without meaning is only half a poem.

One of the Ars Magica of poetry - or indeed, prosody - is therefore linking up the lilt with some actual profundity - and this is what Thomas, as well as all the great poets, do well.

[pseud]

...when the rhyme comes without meaning, or so overwhelms the reader, the narrator or the listener, that all meaning is lost. Yes that would be a thing of beauty in and of itself, but as far as I am concerned, a poem without meaning is only half a poem.

Well said. Many share your opinion.

[cameron]

Give me RS Thomas any day of the week. An underrated genius.

Cheers
Cam

[taliesin_the_poet]

My problem with R.S. Thomas is that he is often dismal and depressing, like a bleak and misty Valleys mountain or an austere prayerbook.

[cameron]

Yes, that's why I like him.

Cam

[taliesin_the_poet]

Then we shall agree to differ on this one. Not that I don't like sad and dismal poems - I have written a few myself - but the perpetually dour can drive one to drink!

[pseud]

And what's wrong with drinking?

[taliesin_the_poet]

Nothing at all - per se. But I would rather not be driven to it - walking is much better, I find. I find, also, that if I drink too much of the vino collapso, I have to be driven back...