The poem "Fern Hill" by Dylan Thomas explores childhood memories and the
             melancholy reality of lost youth. "Fern Hill" compels the reader to come back over and
             over again to seek more insight into the joy and pleasure of a time of innocence lost. The
             figurative speech causes the reader to seek the elusive youth and boyhood days of the
             character and encourages the reader to mourn and celebrate with the writer for the once
             From the opening line, the memories of boyhood days are revealed. The writer
             recalls his carefree life. A beautiful playground, a wooded valley full of apple orchards
             and fresh green meadows, which bring the boy great happiness, "happy as the grass was
             green", can be visualized. Each line is full of boyhood memories. The boy, as many
             young innocent boys do, pretends many things in his playground, his cloistered world. It
             is his golden time, his "heyday" to be young and carefree, to pretend to be "prince of the
             apple towns". There is a sense of such joy in this time in his life; he sings, happily in
             his home on the farm. And yet amidst this joyful memory, is a sense of sadness as we
             realize youth and innocence does not last. This reality and sadness begins to become
             mingled with the joyful memory as we read, "in the sun that is young once only, time let
             me play and be golden in the mercy of his means". Blended with this awareness of
             reality, more boyhood memories are offered; memories of pretending to be"huntsman
             and herdsman". All our senses are beckoned into the pleasures of this joyful time in the
             boys life, we are invited to hear the sounds of the calves singing and the foxes barking
             he plays his horn. We are welcomed to sense the lovely calmness of sabbath days that
             seem to be slow and quiet as a babbling brook. We are encouraged to visualize the "hay
             fields, as high as the house"; to hear the sounds o
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