Activity 2.4.5 – Critical Analysis of ‘Fern Hill’ (Stanzas 4-6)
Play again to hear Dylan Thomas recite the last three stanzas of 'Fern Hill'.
Note: You will need a VPN to access YouTube if you are in China.
GLOSSARY:
Nightjar: A nocturnal bird
Ricks: Stacks of hay, corn, or straw
Spellbound: To be bound in complete attention, in a seemingly magical manner
Heedless: Reckless
Swallow: A type of songbird
Using the following text of the last three stanzas, paraphrase the phrases and words in BOLDED text. If the selection contains a literary device, indicate it.
And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.
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.
And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
In the sun born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the house high hay
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.
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,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
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.