Part 2, Project 3, Exercise 3: A close reading of Fern Hill by Dylan Thomas

  A close reading of 'Fern Hill' by Dylan Thomas

Here are the notes I made as I looked at the poem:

After reading several times and listening to the reading of the poem by Richard Burton on youtube ( https://youtu.be/2Z-ZuguSrQQ ), I looked at the questions the exercise prompted:

What is the mood? How does it make you feel?

Nostalgic

Reminiscent 

Sense of youth

Sense of the countryside

Adventurous

Thoughts of ageing

Sense of Mortality

Feelings of summer time

Sense of freedom and recklessness of childhood

Innocence developing into maturity

What poetic devices does Thomas use and what effects they have on the poem? Use the list above to help you.

 

Rhythm - the repeated pattern of the poem's paragraphs

 

Imagery - describing the scenes with colours

 

Assonance ' trees and leaves' 'green and carefree'

 

Onomatopoeia - 'barked' 'rang'

 

Consonance - 'green as grass'

 

Simile - 'happy as the heart is long'

 

Personification - 'I should hear him fly with the high fields' (in regards to the moon)

 

Metaphor - 'time held me', 'my wishes raced through the house high hay'

 

Repetition throughout e.g. 'green as grass'

 

How did the poetic devices help evoke the themes of time and place? Can you identify any other theme running through this poem?

The personification of time and of the sun and the moon adds characters into the poem, giving it a more of a story like quality, and gives a greater sense of power to the identities. For example 'Time let me play and be',  and 'In the sun born over and over'.

There is also personification of the surroundings, again adding character to the sense of place in the poem. for example  'Out of the whinnying green stable, On to fields of praise'.

Onomatopoeia is used to create the sounds of farmland and wild animals, such as 'Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold', suggests a game of foxhunting or at least a child pretending to hunt. 

 Consonance adds to details of colour and scenery, by emphasising them with repetitive sounds. They're more noticeable in the sentence especially when read aloud. For example '..grass was green' and 'green and golden'. Words to describe colour are often repeated through the poem as well, to create imagery.

 The layout of the poem is also rhythmic, having two lines of shorter verse in the middle of each paragraph. These lines themselves consistently refer to the sense of time, be it day or night, sun or moon, or just time itself.  

As well as the themes of time and place, I believe there is a theme of mortality because it's as if the speaker is reminiscent of their youth, talking in past tense. There are also the last lines which, to me, sound as if the speaker is at the end of their life, or feeling less able to enjoy their freedom e.g. 'Time held me green and dying, Though I sang in my chains like the sea.'

I think the most obvious theme in the poem is the process of life, and the memories we have. It reminds me of the well known phrase 'youth is wasted on the young', as the poem focuses on 'heedless ways' compared to the 'chains' in the last line.

What lines or images stay with you? What do they remind you of how they make you feel?

 

'Before the children green and golden, Follow him out of grace' 

I think this was the line that really made me feel it was a poem about nostalgia and childhood innocence. I also like the consonance in the line because it gives a rhythm to the sentence.

'Time held me green and dying, Though I sang in my chains like the sea'

These lines were remarkably chilling in contrast to the rest of the joyful, upbeat feel of the poem. It also changes the context of the word 'green', I think to play with the symbolic meaning of the colour, to possibly represent the cycle of life and death. The simile of comparing the speaker's 'chains' to the 'sea', takes me out of the colourful countryside and takes us to a sad, groaning, grey expanse of the sea.

Is the 'speaker' important? What are his views? Are they apparent or inferred?

 Its the speaker who is taking us into their memories and taking us through their perspective of their youth and time itself. I believe the speaker is inferring his views by not stating them outright. But hinting at them using words such as 'carefree' and 'heedless'. We can see the speaker is reminiscing about youth and life, and we as the readers can expand on that ourselves, by looking at our own views and experiences.

Are there any lines you don't get? Can you hazard a guess as to what they mean or allude to?

 

There are some phrases and words that I don't understand, eg. 'the night above the dingle starry'. I can only assume 'dingle' to refer to some kind of landscape?

Also 'by the gay house', I assume to mean 'happy/joyful' house, or otherwise it is a farm term I don't understand.

The words 'nightjars' and 'ricks', I assume to mean birds or insects as they are 'flying' and sound like slang terms or nicknames for common wildlife.

 Generally the whole poem was difficult to understand at first and did take quite a few reads to really consider it's meaning.