Poem Analysis: Fern Hill By Dylan Thomas

“Fern Hill” is a poem by Dylan Thomas. The poem is set in Fern Hill a farm in Carmarthenshire where Dylan Thomas went on holiday when he was growing up.

The first line of the poem is “Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs”. The past tense, “was” indicates that the speaker is an adult now. The words “young and easy” highlight that Dylan Thomas is recalling his memories of when he was a child and when he had no worries. The poet explains his young days as being as “happy as grass is green” the use of a simile gives the reader information about one object that is unknown by the reader by comparing it to something with which the reader is familiar. This quotation makes the reader imagen the farm as being all joly, natural and

In addition to this each stanza has the exact same number of lines with the exact same number of syllables in each line. Dylan Thomas also uses syntax repetition in order to reinforce the imagery for example he repeats the colours “green and golden”. This gives the reader a sense of Dylans rural world. The poem has a sing song rhythm, this is shown when is says “lilting house”. We can see from this that childhood was a great time in Thomas life. The poet uses a variety of rhymes in order to build an ideal imagery of the farm. He uses vowel rhyme. A prime example is “trees and leaves”, the long “e” creates the rhyme. In addition to this the poet also uses the repetition of consonance. This is outlined when it says “farm was home”. The poet also uses assonance, this is shown when it says “sun that is young”. The use of different rhymes brings the poem alive as it gives it a sing song rhythm and makes the reader feel happy and reflective on his childhood. Dylan Thomas creates music in the poem using repetition of the words “green and golden”, the use of repetition also helped the reader build a picture of Dylans memory.

Overall, I like this particular poem because it reminds me of happy times in my childhood and that we should enjoy every moment in our lives as we don't know what is tomorrow going to bring us. This poem also teaches us that time is passing and so we need to take every opportunity we get and we need to be thankful for what we have. I also like this poem as the poet uses personification to bring it