Dylan Thomas “Fern Hill”

                After first reading this, it was a relief to find that some poets upheld the values of something thought out purposeful and metered. Even if there was no justified rhyme scheme at the end that pre-modernists sought to maintain, the poem is still not so  haphazard and careless sounding as those of the Beat poets. This poem has themes of the innocence of youth and the injustices of growing older. I Feel like the whole poem is a set up painting an impressionistic like picture of what a joyous life a young child can have on a farm, so that the last stanza can seemingly reverse our lighthearted mood that Thomas has created.  The last two lines of the last stanza are specifically paradoxical to what we hear at the beginning of the poem. “Time held me green and dying / Though I sang in my chains like the sea.” (lines 53-54). Thomas also seems to use describing words in very unconventional ways. In this way he is not like the old poets. He likes to use adjectives that normally describe other things for unexpected nouns and verbs.