Student Question

How does Thomas explore nostalgia in "Fern Hill"?

Quick answer:

Thomas presents the theme of nostalgia in "Fern Hill" by reminiscing about his glorious childhood days from an adult point of view. First, he emphasizes youth, innocence, vitality, and strength through the repetition of the colors green and gold. Second, he describes how carefree and powerful he felt and acted as a boy. Finally, Thomas reveals that as a youth, he did not appreciate the beauty of his life until time took him out of this idealized world.

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In “Fern Hill,” Thomas sentimentally recalls his childhood with longing. The poem is filled with nostalgia—a wistful longing for a happier time and place in the past—and told the perspective of an adult perspective. The poet indicates this point of view by noting that the descriptions of himself and his boyhood life all took place earlier; by the end of the fifth stanza, he reveals that he left his utopian childhood home and followed time “out of grace.” Thomas expresses nostalgia by idealizing and eulogizing the past.

Thomas concentrates the first four stanzas on his youth and earlier state of mind, describing himself as “young and easy,” “green and carefree,” and “green and golden.” He repeats the colors green and gold to symbolize innocence and command. As a boy, Thomas lacked and was ignorant of worries. As the boyhood ruler of his small kingdom (the farm), he was free to climb trees, play, and sing. He reminisces that he was the “prince of the apple towns” and that he “lordly had the trees and leaves.” In a land filled with wildlife and livestock, he was both “huntsman and herdsman.”

Speaking of land, even the landscape of his childhood farm was green—fertile and full of potential. The grass was green, which is expected. What is unexpected is the “fire as green as grass,” an image that conjures up an imaginary world. Also magical are his “spellbound horses” that live in a “green stable.” Thomas presents his childhood home as an unreal and now unreachable place.

By the fifth stanza, he admits

I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades

As he mentioned earlier, he was “carefree”; here, however, he is not only without a worry, but also careless. Thomas seems to regret that he did not pay attention to and appreciate his life and surroundings before time ushered him out of this idyllic world.

He repeats this idea in the final stanza with

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me

His “lamb white” days of innocence kept him not only free of concerns, but also oblivious of future concerns and time’s passage. He found himself waking 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.

The farm is no longer a place of youth and joy. The surrounding landscape no longer rich, fertile, and full of life, but barren. His interjection “Oh” reveals a sad, wistfulness longing for earlier days. Finally, the color green no longer symbolizes youth, innocence, and vitality, but sickness, decay, and death.

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