Fern Hill Essays

Considered to be one of the greatest Welsh poets of all time, Thomas is largely known for his imaginative use of language and vivid imagery in his poems.

Considered to be one of the greatest Welsh poets of all time, Thomas is largely known for his imaginative use of language and vivid imagery in his poems.

“Sleeping” in the poem is symbolic that refers to the loss of innocence that equates the Adam and Eve, who had slept after a fall from the Grace of God.

This initiation of the world of maturity entails the loss of Edenic bliss, innocence, grace and freedom.

The poem can be divided into two parts: the first three stanzas are related to the poet’s experience as a child when he uses to spend his summer holidays at his uncle’s farm (Fern Hill, it is in Wan sea in Wales) but the last three stanzas are about an awakening in the child which signifies the loss of the world of innocence.

At the center of this loss of the innocence are the myths of fall of the first human beings (Adam and Eve).

In his life he avoided becoming involved with literary groups or movements, and unlike other prominent writers of the 1930s—such as W. Auden and , for example—he had little use for socialistic ideas in his art.

Thomas can be seen as an extension into the 20th century of the general movement called Romanticism, particularly in its emphasis on imagination, emotion, intuition, spontaneity, and organic form.

In the last line the poet refers to his chained situation in the world of experience. So, this poem is the journey from childhood to manhood when the manhood comes, the man suffers from agony. The use of verb “song” hints that the losses can be captured through art in the last line stanza.

Of course, the poem is intensely nostalgic: but it is written from a point of view which takes into account the fact that the adult has awoken, "to the farm forever fled from the childless land".

This flashing is a kind of awakening as hinted by the first line of the fourth stanza.

In this awakening the child (speaker) initiates into the world of maturity.