Fern Hill - Definition and Overview

A pivotal poem in the career of Dylan Thomas, Fern Hill starts as a straightforward evocation of his youthful visits to his aunts:

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs

About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green.

In the middle section the idyllic scene is expanded upon, reinforced by the lilting rhythm of the poem, the dreamlike, pastoral metaphors and allusion to scenes from Eden. By the end the poet's older voice has taken over, mourning his lost youth with echoes of the opening:

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.