Fern Hill Commentary
             The poem "Fern Hill" by Dylan Thomas renders childhood as a period of paradise. The motifs of religion and nature emphasize this theme, and provide a direct allusion of the poem to the story of Adam and Eve and their lives in the Garden of Eden. This paradise is mirrored in the poem, where there was a beautiful farm, with rivers bordered by daisies and images of the apple trees in fresh green meadows, the setting of the narrator's childhood fantasy. The motif of nature orients to the perfection and purity of the environment, which can be linked to the narrator's childhood. These motifs stress the theme of a childhood in paradise.
             The motif of religion accentuates the narrator's childhood with references to Adam and Eve. The phrase, "And the Sabbath rang slowly in the pebbles of the holy streams" displays the image of "pebbles in holy streams" calling upon others to come and praise, as a church or a place of worship and gathering. The holy streams not only represent the setting of "Fern Hill" as the narrator's home, but also as a holy land that provided the narrator's childhood with an eternal paradise. When the poet writes, "Shining, it was Adam and maiden", he is making a direct allusion of the paradise on Fern Hill, to the paradise in which Adam and Eve lived. Adam and maiden being an unclear wanderer symbolizes the similar characters there in similar settings. Having Adam and the maiden in similar emerge in the narrator's setting; Thomas shows the characters coexist in similar themes of paradise and innocence. In reference to theme, the innocence of the narrator was lost, much as Adam and Eve also lost their innocence in the Garden of Eden as youth passed by them; nevertheless, his childhood essence remained within him.
             The theme of living a childhood in a rapturous setting makes references to nature th
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