ISC and ICSE English Guide : A Help to ICSE and ISC Students

Stanza 1:

Lines 1-2

Now I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green

Welcome to Fern Hill, where the speaker was once young and carefree. Plus, apple trees. Sounds like a great place to Shmoop.
He also hung out in his "lilting house." What in the world is a lilting house, you ask? Well, lilting is an old school style of Gaelic singing, but it can refer to anything with a cheerful, happy tone.
So was the house singing? Well, maybe not literally, but with this personification, the speaker is setting the mood for the rest of the poem. Things are good.
He's young, happy, and the pastoral scenery is like a mirror of the speaker's joy.

Lines 3-5

The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,

Lines 3-5 look a bit different from the opening lines. They're shorter, but they stick with scene setting like the opening two lines.
Line 3 tells us that the night sky was full of stars, but the order of the words is a little funny. Why? Well, try rereading the line like this: the night starry above the dingle (and as much as you might snicker at that word, a dingle is just a small valley). By using that word, Thomas keeps the line quick and perky (try inserting valley instead, and you'll see what we mean). It seems like the speaker is as concerned with the sounds of words as he is with what he's describing.
In that way, the poem's form has started to mirror its content. These lines have a cheerful cadence that's the perfect fit for their cheerful meaning.
Time enters the poem in line 4 and 5 as if the speaker and Time are BFFs. Thanks to a handy use of personification, these two sound like two peas in a pod—playmates under the apple boughs.
Time even has "eyes" here. So what does that mean? Maybe that time is keeping watch over the youngster. But it also suggests that Time is happy to see the speaker so young and carefree.
So the speaker can salute Time, feel "golden" and yet, because we know that Time, being what it is, will change, we have a suspicion that the "heydays" of his eyes won't last forever.

Lines 6-9

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.

The poem continues praising the good ol' days, calling himself a "prince" in line 6. You might think of that as a metaphor of youth and promise.
Then, he opens like 7 with a slight variation of the fairytale phrase, "once upon a time." Here, he says, "once below a time." It sounds like something is buried under time, sort of like what happens when something dies, right? But also, something like treasure that needs to be recovered.
And what was happening below this time? The speaker spent his days ruling over the trees and leaves and daisies and barley and rivers, blown by the wind.
The gist here is that he felt like a young, powerful, world-at-his-fingertips prince. Things were easy, beautiful, and awesome.
By the end of this first nine-line stanza, a clear rhythm has been established. The sing-songy feel of the poem is impossible to miss.
But how is Thomas pulling that off? With sound play—that's how.
We've got tons of vowel rhymes, or assonance, in words like "trees" and "leaves." They don't rhyme perfectly, but the long "e" sound binds them together.
Same with "daises" and "barley." Then there's consonance in pairs like "Rivers" and "windfall." The "v" in rivers and the "f" in windfall bind the words together by sound.
But wait, there's more. He also says, "apple towns" which echoes "apple boughs" from the beginning of the stanza.
Why all the repetition? We think it has something to do with Thomas's talent for music in a poem. His artful use of repetitive sounds and a vaguely iambic meter (hear that daDUM daDUM daDUM underneath the lines?) help Thomas create a sense of unity within the stanzas. This gives the poem, which has no traditional poetic form, a structure all its own. In fact, Thomas peppers every stanza in the poem with these qualities, so keep an eye (or ear) out as you read.

Stanza 2:

Lines 10-11

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,

Here he goes again. We've got repetition up the wazoo in these lines, with some interesting twists to keep us on our toes.
Much like the "grass was green" in the first stanza, the speaker is green here. And just as he was "easy" in line 1, here he's "carefree." And much like the speaker was happy in line 2, here the yard is happy, which is a handy example of pathetic fallacy, or attributing human feelings and emotions to inanimate objects, like a yard. And just as the house was "lilting" in line 2, so the speaker's "singing" in line 11.
Whew. That's a whole lot of similar ideas, with a few shakeups here and there. What this tells us is that Thomas isn't just about creating unity within stanzas—he's all about creating unity between stanzas, too. And he's not going to use just sound play to accomplish that goal. He's going to use ideas as well—youthfulness, happiness, carefreeness, singing.

Lines 12-14

In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,

Here's our first hint that all this joyful youthfulness won't last. The speaker's romping and frolicking beneath a sun "that is young once only."
It's another moment of personification that makes the natural world seem somehow closer to the speaker.
Which is only reinforced when his old buddy Time shows up, to let him play. And Time seems merciful here, as if he's trying to let this young kid have as much fun as possible before that sun, and the speaker, grow old. Still, Time is definitely an authority figure; he's got the power. At least, in this case, he's using his power for good by allowing the kid to play.

Lines 15-18

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.

Okay, it's official. This is the most repetitive poem ever. Now that we've reached the end of the second stanza, we're starting to realize it looks an awful lot like the first.
But we'll get to that in a minute. First? Content.
We get more green and gold imagery that describes the speaker: he was "huntsman and herdsman" and basically every animal ever did his bidding, mooing and barking and who knows what else.
Then the Sabbath enters the poem. It rings, which is odd, but even odder, it rings in the pebbles of the holy streams. The speaker talks about the landscape with such reverence, he believes it to be sacred. And like the rivers of light in the first stanza, this stanza ends with "holy streams."
Now let's talk form. Did you notice that this stanza seems eerily familiar? Check out the structure of the lines.
"Now as I was […]" from line 1 becomes "And as I was […]" in line 10. "About the lilting house and happy as […]" (2) becomes "About the happy yard and singing as […]" (11). "Time let me" from line 4 gets repeated in line 13, and "Golden in the heydays" (5) becomes "Golden in the mercy" (14).
All that repeated syntax is only reinforced by the repeated imagery here. Greens, golds, rivers, stars—it's all popping up again and again, to create a dreamlike sense of this youth's pastoral world.
And then there are those sonic repetitions to deal with. The long E's of green, carefree, happy, be, mercy, means, green, and streams. The consonance of "farm was home." The assonance of "sun that is young." The alliteration of "mercy of his means" and "huntsman and herdsman" and "clear and cold."
No matter which way you look (or listen) in "Fern Hill," the repetition is inescapable, adding music and meaning to each line and stanza.
But the syntax and sounds aren't the only thing that make this stanza look a lot like stanza 1. They both have nine lines, and each of those lines has a certain number of syllables, depending on where it falls in the stanza. For more on that, check out our "Form and Meter" section, and in the meantime, keep an eye out for more syntactic, sonic, and structural repetitions as you make your way through "Fern Hill."

Stanza 3:

Lines 19-20

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

The speaker continues to explain what it was like being young at Fern Hill.
Notice how the syntax, the order of words, is used in this line. The repetition of the phrase "it was" creates a rhythm so the words are actually doing what they describe—growing more excited, more amped up. The speaker is describing long, pleasant, exciting days, and the line is a long, pleasantly rhythmic, excited line.
Line 20 continues to tell us about the awesomesauce landscape. We have fields that are "high" and chimneys that play "tunes" and then that phrase "it was" yet again. The speaker is so entranced with his memory and description, it's like the landscape has a life of its own.
And notice how he ends the line on "air." That's not a mistake. In fact, it's a tool poets like to use called enjambment, and this poem's chock full of it.
What do you think of when you think of air? Something invisible and everywhere, right? Or something your life depends upon. In this sense, the speaker is deeply connected with what gives him life, which makes him seem all the more alive.

Lines 21-23

And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars

And, and, and. That's anaphora at its best, ladies and gentlemen. Beginning each line with "and" gives Thomas a chance to build momentum, to stack up the pastoral imagery.
And just what are those images here? Well, things have taken a dreamy turn, and instead of specific descriptions of apple boughs, we get "lovely and watery / And fire green as grass" under "simple stars."
Using a word like "watery" works for several reasons. First, it ends on that long E sound, which echoes in "lovely," "green," and "nightly." But water, like air, is also a symbol of a life-giving source. And it's fluid, and flowing, just like the lines of the poem, which suggests the passing of time.
Line 22 brings back the speaker's favorite "green as grass" but this time it's a clause describing fire. Why fire? Possibly because there were fires in the evening, but also because fire is a source of energy and light and warmth. These are all good things, and tonally consistent with the mood of being young and healthy.
Line 23 moves the poem into nighttime. The stars are "simple" just like the speaker's life back then.
While this stanza so far is a bit different from the first two, it's clear that the themes, imagery, and sound patterns are much the same.

Lines 24-27

As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among the stables, the nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.

These lines are the beginning of the end of the day for the speaker. Still, the beauty remains, and yet something different is beginning to happen.
The owls are "bearing the farm away" as if the landscape itself is leaving. Instead of all the sun long, he says, "all the moon long," meaning, all night long he heard nocturnal birds (nightjars) "flying with the ricks." Ricks are stacks of hay, and they seem to be taking off, too. Trippy. It's like the farm is alive and is walking away in the night. Even the horses are "flashing" into the dark.
Imagine looking out your window and watching the trees in your backyard uproot and start walking away. That would be weird, right? Well, this is also a figurative leaving for the speaker. A shift has begun to occur as night appears. The landscape, which brought so much freedom and joy, is beginning to leave.
Just as the day has ended, the night has begun, and time is passing.
It's also worth noting that the look of the stanza has changed a bit. The patterns established in the first two stanzas—the syntax, the indentations of the lines, have shifted.
Now, the final line of the stanza is indented even further than the one before. And the imagery, too, has turned dream-like and strange. This is no longer your stock and standard pastoral poem. Things are getting weird up in here.

Stanza 4:

Lines 28-29

And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all

In these lines, the day returns, the speaker awakes, and all is beautiful and back in place. Huzzah! He continues to praise the beauty of the landscape, using a simile to describe the farm in the morning as "a wanderer white / with the dew." Of course that simile also personifies the farm, giving it a shoulder in line 29.
There's a callback to the previous stanza here, too. "It was all" at the end of line 29 looks and sounds an awful lot like "it was air" from line 20. There's that repetition again.
And did you notice how that hard K sound has appeared in the past few lines? The "ricks" and "dark" and "awake" and "cock" sonically bind together the passing of night into day. It's a bit jarring, too, which is an effective reminder that it's about time we wake up.

Lines 30-32

Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.

Allusion alert! The speaker name drops the first man, Adam, and the maiden, Eve. Clearly this guy thinks this farm is paradise—Eden, even.
But when you combine this reference with his mention of apples earlier in the poem, you can't help but wonder: is this all going to come to an end? Is our speaker doomed to be cast out of this farm, just like Adam and Eve found themselves kicked out of Eden?
Maybe. It's worth remembering that this poem isn't just about how awesome the farm is. It's also about how awesome the farm is when the speaker was young. We're working in the past tense here.

Lines 33-36

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.

On with the religious imagery. Here he's saying that the farm in the morning is like God's creation itself. Not that he's exaggerating or anything.
"After the birth of the simple light" likely refers to Genesis 1:3—you know, that whole "let there be light" thing?
For him, the sun rising on the farm, the waking up of the horses, and all that morning jazz is just like that moment of creation. That's how strongly he feels about how awesome this farm was when he was young.
Detail-wise, there's a lot to love in these lines. Check out the callback to line 23, when he called the stars "simple." Here he calls the light of the rising sun "simple." Well, the sun's a star so that makes sense.
And then there's that awesome switcheroo Thomas pulls in line 35.
Normally, horses whinny. But here, the green stables are whinnying, giving them a life of their own.
This stanza ends with "fields of praise." Up until now, the speaker has been praising Fern Hill. So he's just calling a spade a spade and saying, "look, these fields are praiseworthy and I'm praising them." But here the fields seem to be made of praise themselves. There's such a merging of the landscape and this speaker's feelings that we hardly know where one ends and the other begins.

Stanza 5:

Lines 37-38

And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,

Still reminiscing, our speaker relies on old poetic tricks. Take "the gay house," for example. That's yet another pathetic fallacy, in which the speaker is projecting emotions onto an object that sure as shootin' has no feelings whatsoever.
He's also repeating himself yet again (surprise, surprise) with that phrase "And honoured." We saw that one way back in line 6. Once again, the speaker's echoing himself.
And we also have more emphasis on newness here—the "new made clouds"—and happiness, too.
Sure, this speaker may be ridiculously repetitive, but hey, he just can't help himself. That's how awesome life was on the farm, back in the day.

Lines 39-41

In the sun born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways
My wishes raced through the house high hay

As the sun is "born over and over," like something that will never die, the speaker says that he "ran my heedless ways." In other words, he was a carefree little punk, not really paying much attention to what he had.
It's a strange confession in some ways, because he seems to have paid attention to a lot. The vivid description and figurative language of the poem have made Fern Hill come alive on the page. But as a child, he's admitting he didn't stop to appreciate where he was or how pleasant youth can be. Could this be a hint at what's to come in the final stanza?
In line 41, he says his wishes "raced," and we think that's fitting. After all, the rush of imagery and description in this poem, combined with its sing-songy rhythm and repetitive sounds, have given this poem a whole lot of forward momentum. But we know that that forward momentum has to come to an end sometime.

Lines 42-45

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.

At long last, we see regret creeping through these lines. The speaker says he didn't care to heed such beauty and innocence back then, and didn't realize that those days would be "so few." Ah, hindsight is 20/20, right?
And as time goes on, time becomes the very thing that leads him out of his imaginary Eden. Earlier in the poem, Time was like a watchful guardian, spoiling the speaker with the illusion of an eternity of happiness and joy, all green and golden. But here, time has shifted and becomes the "tuneful turning" that leads the children out of this perfect summer.
We're betting you spotted it, but we'll go ahead and point it out anyway: check out his repetition of "green" and "golden." Once again, we get the sense that these colors are deeply connected to youth, vitality, joy, innocence. You get the picture.
But then time leads those children away from that era. They are "following him out of grace." It's possible too that time is acting a bit like the Pied Piper, from the tales of the Brothers Grimm. He lures children away from their town by playing a flute. And here, time "in all his tuneful and turning" is playing a song that lures the children. In fact, the whole landscape (remember the spellbound horses?) is enchanted.
But here, time leads the children away from the few mornings it has allowed them. Suddenly, it's all over, and it's time the children have to follow "out of grace." Sounds like time pulled the ultimate fake out, and the speaker fell for it.
That word "grace" jumps out at Shmoop, especially with all those Eden references earlier in the poem. In Christianity, grace is the love and mercy of God, who gives it to sinners freely for salvation. According to some, this grace is really only necessary because of original sin—because Adam and Eve ate the fruit in Eden and got themselves a one-way ticket East of Eden.
In a way, then, this poem reads like a subtle parallel of Adam and Eve's story. Just like Adam and Eve were cast out of paradise, this young kid (and all other young kids like him), are cast out of a state of grace by Time.

Stanza 6:

Lines 46-48

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,

The speaker tells us that back then, when he was young and easy, he just didn't care that time was going to swoop in and take it all away.
At some point in his youth, apparently, time came along and took him up to the barn loft, which was filled with swallows.
And time led him "by the shadow of [his] hand." Now there's an image.
Earlier in the poem, everything was bright and gleaming and golden, but here, we have an image of a shadow of the speaker's hand. Things are getting darker, fast. That growing dark highlights the contrast from his earlier, "lamb white" days.
It's also highlighted in the fact that it's no longer the sun shining down on all this—it's "the moon that is always rising." And the fact that that moon is always rising would seem to suggest that this coming night, this falling from grace, thanks to time, is going to last a long, long while.

Lines 49-50

Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields

The speaker tells us that he also didn't care that as he slept as a young'un, time was flying with the high fields.
It sure sounds like time is pulling a fast one on the speaker. Just when he thought everything was perfect and going to last forever, time heads out and takes the "high fields" with him.
The tone has shifted considerably here. We've said adios to the fantasy of endless youth, and the landscape is folding up and heading out.
And not only that, but the speaker says he didn't even notice everything on its way out—he was too busy not caring. Ah, to get those days back.

Lines 51-54

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.

Talk about a mood shift. The beauty that's been established in the previous five stanzas has suddenly and sorrowfully disappeared.
When the speaker wakes this time, instead of waking up to "the farm, like a wanderer white / With the dew," the farm has "forever fled from the childless land." The kids are gone and the field has picked up stakes and moved on. Sorry y'all, show's over.
Line 52 begins with "Oh." And that one little syllable makes all the difference in the world. With that sad little "Oh," the speaker conveys his wistfulness and regret, remembering bygone days that are long gone. His nostalgia really shines through, all in that one word.
Here, we get the real truth about all those young, easy days. The speaker only had them because he was at the "mercy" of time's "means."
But it turns out that the whole time he was young and "green," he was also "dying." Ain't that the truth? We mean, if you want to get pessimistic about it, you could say that the moment we're born, we're on the long march to death. It's just that when we're young and carefree, we don't really think about it.
Suddenly, the color green—once associated with growth and vitality—is associated with death, because the entire time the speaker was young and green, he was "in chains." And he was singing in them because he simply didn't know any better. Ah, the follies of youth.
Finally, the last word of the poem is "sea." The speaker, as a youngster, sang in his chains like the sea. This either means that the sea sings, or the sea sings in chains; there's a bit of ambiguity here.
Why the sea? So far, the poem's been all about the land, and suddenly the sea's singing. What gives? Your guess is as good as ours, so Shmoop amongst yourselves.