The Importance of Time in Fern Hill by Dylan Thomas

“Now I was young and effortless beneath the apple boughs.” (1). In the poem Fern Hill, the poet tries to express the way he felt as a kid, laying happily below the trees on a starry evening. And by the way he speaks, he seems to do on a lot more than one occasion. Thomas makes use of colours to illustrate moments in time and to emphasis particular lines to give them much more which means. There is also a robust sense of time displayed in numerous parts of the poem, time that is both of him as a kid and as an adult.

The poet makes use of the presence of time as a connection to his childhood in several approaches, such as when the poet says, “Time let me play and be.” (13). Twice in this poem, the phrase “Time let me” seems, and each time the poet offers a distinct thing that time permitted him to do, to “hail and climb,” (4) and to “play and be.” (13). Although a significant theme in this poem is youth and childhood, there is a fair quantity about time passing and developing older displayed, which is illustrated when Thomas writes in the second stanza, “In the sun that is only young after,” (12). This line is the first time we see that youth is not ever lasting and that receiving older in inevitable. An additional way we are told about the inevitability of getting older, is the presence of previous tense verbs such as were and was, which Thomas has placed throughout the poem. A couple of examples of his past tense verb placings are, “[…] singing as the farm was residence,” (11) which is some thing that indicates that the farm is no longer house to him, and in the end of the second stanza Thomas writes, “And green and gold I was huntsman and herdsman,” (15).

Colour is used in this poem to express different emotions and stages in a person’s life. This symbolism is shown when the poet says, “And as I was green and carefree,” (ten). When the poet utilizes the colour green, it is him producing a reference to his childhood. However, at the finish of the poem, Thomas utilizes the colour in a complete distinct way. He writes, “Time held me green and dying,” (53), and in this case Thomas uses it as a way to inform us how he feels now, searching back on his childhood. The poet also utilizes gold, or as Thomas puts it, golden, when he does so, he is referring to the height of his youth which Thomas dramatizes when he writes, “Golden in the heyday of his eyes,” (five), meaning at that point, the poet was the happiest that he could be at that time. In the final stanza Thomas writes, “[…] in the lamb white days,” (46). The significance of “the lamb” is that it is something pure and innocent, which is also what the colour white represents.

Time is one particular of the most crucial themes in this poem, due to the fact the poem is about time passing and days going by. By the finish of the poem, the way time is presented has changed drastically, the poet isn’t speaking as even though life is light or pleased any longer, and he is speaking as if time is now the enemy, “[…] time would take me” (46), “Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand.” (47). This is a darker tone to the poem, taking into consideration that before we heard items like, “And the sun grew round that extremely day,” (32), and nearer the finish, in the last stanza, the poet recites, “In the moon that is usually rising,” (48). The poet went from talking about how the sun would rise day in and day out, to speaking of the moon staying high in the sky.

Following reading this poem, one of the 1st concerns that came to be was, who won? Was is the poet? Who talked of his glorious adventures as a youngster that produced him content. Or was it time? Which in the finish, managed to take the last thing that the poet had left, his life. It could be debated that time was the winner in the feud, since right after all, dying is instances ultimate final move. But if you genuinely think and analyse the final 3 lines in the poem, it will tell you that even although he is dying, he is still singing, “Though I sang in the chains like the sea,” (54). Is he really dead if fifty years soon after he has passed, people are still sitting and reading this poem?