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17 pages 34 minutes read

Dylan Thomas

Fern Hill

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1945

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Literary Devices

Form and Meter

"Fern Hill" is sparingly rhymed, with no more than one end rhyme per stanza. For example, “starry” (Line 3) and “barley” (Line 8), and “me” (Line 46) and “sea” (Line 54).

The length of the lines varies. The first two lines of each stanza, as well as Lines 6 and 7, are long. With just a few exceptions, each of these lines consists of 14 syllables, or seven poetic feet. The rhythm is iambic (an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable), which means that the line is an iambic heptameter.

In all the stanzas, Lines 3, 4, and 5 are shorter than the first two lines, and Lines 8 and 9 are shorter than Lines 6 and 7. The shortest line in every stanza is Line 4, which comprises three feet, making the line an iambic trimeter. (There is one exception, Line 22, which is one syllable short.) In the trimeter of Lines 4 and 13, there is a variation in the iambic meter, since each of these lines begins with a trochee. A trochee is a reversed iamb—a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed one. Interestingly this substitution is with the word “Time,” which means this word stands out at the beginning of the line against the expected iambic rhythm. This is interesting because, metrically speaking, it brings the notion of time to the fore, which foreshadows the devastating effect it will eventually have, as revealed later in the poem.

Alliteration and Assonance

The main poetic device is alliteration: the repetition of initial sounds in words appearing closely together. As a renowned reader aloud of his own and other people’s poems, Thomas was acutely aware of how his poems sounded, and alliteration greatly contributes to the poetic effect of “Fern Hill” when read aloud. Thomas makes use of it in every stanza. Examples include the “h” and “g” sounds in “About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green” (Line 2); these same sounds are repeated in reverse order in “green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman” (Line 15). Other examples include “mercy of his means” (Line 14); “clear and cold” (Line 16); “sabbath rang slowly” (Line 17); “hay / Fields high as the house” (Lines 19-20); “simple stars” (Line 23); “wanderer white” (Line 28); “walking warm” (Line 34); “foxes and pheasants” (Line 37); “house high hay” (Line 41); “tuneful turning” (Line 43); “farm forever fled” (Line 51); and “sang in my chains like the sea” (Line 54).

Assonance is the repetition of nearby vowel sounds, and there are a number of examples of it in "Fern Hill." These include “trees and leaves” (Line 7); “rivers of the windfall” (Line 9); “sun that is young” (Line 12); “let me play and be” (Line 13); “all the sun long it was running” (Line 19); “nightjars flying” (Line 26); “spinning” (Line 34) and “whinnying” (Line 35); and “fly with the high” (Line 50).

The presence of so much alliteration and assonance significantly contributes to the mellifluous flow of the poetic language—a fitting match for the poet’s declaration right at the beginning: “as I was young and easy” (Line 1).

Epithets

An epithet is an adjective describing a characteristic of a person or thing. In “Fern Hill,” Thomas employs a number of figurative epithets. These include “lilting house” (Line 2): Lilting means steady swinging or rhythmic, usually a pleasing rhythm, and is often applied to song or speech. Obviously, the epithet here is not literally meant, but it fits well into the recurring musical motifs of the poem and suggests how the house is part of the general happiness and harmony. The same applies to “happy yard” (Line 11). In Line 42, “sky blue trades” is another figurative epithet. It refers to the activities in which the boy participated under a blue sky, but “sky blue” is used as an epithet for “trades,” which creates a condensed, pleasing poetic phrase.

A transferred epithet is a figure of speech in which an adjective is used to qualify a noun that it does not literally qualify and would normally be applied to a different noun. In “Fern Hill,” “whinnying green stable” (Line 35) is a double transferred epithet, since neither whinnying nor green can—in ordinary language—be used to qualify the word “stable.” It is actually the horses in the previous line (Line 34) that do the whinnying as they leave the stable; it is the “field” onto which they trot that is green.

As the above examples show, figurative epithets of all kinds may often employ the pathetic fallacy—the attribution of human characteristics or feelings to abstract or inanimate objects.

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