Day 253: Green Fire

 

Now here is where poetry comes closest to painting - is the pencilled note I have scribbled beside this poem in my Norton Anthology of Poetry from my college years. 

Our poetry professor at the time, who was extremely enthusiastic about poetry (at a time when I was not I might add), had picked this poem not only for its imagery, but its energy, its verve, its fervour; how the language carries its theme of youthful exuberance perfectly and how the whole poem seems to flare from the page in its own 'fire as green as grass', the green energy of living.

Fern Hill - Dylan Thomas

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs

About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,

       The night above the dingle starry,

               Time let me hail and climb

       Golden in the heydays of his eyes,

And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns

And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves

               Trail with daisies and barley

       Down the rivers of the windfall light.

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns

About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,

       In the sun that is young once only,

               Time let me play and be   

       Golden in the mercy of his means,

And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves

Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,

               And the sabbath rang slowly

       In the pebbles of the holy streams.

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay

Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air

       And playing, lovely and watery

               And fire green as grass.

       And nightly under the simple stars

As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,

All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars

       Flying with the ricks, and the horses

               Flashing into the dark.

And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white

With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all

       Shining, it was Adam and maiden,

               The sky gathered again

       And the sun grew round that very day.

So it must have been after the birth of the simple light

In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm

       Out of the whinnying green stable

               On to the fields of praise.

And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house

Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,

       In the sun born over and over,

               I ran my heedless ways,

       My wishes raced through the house high hay

And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows

In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs

       Before the children green and golden

               Follow him out of grace,

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

Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,

       In the moon that is always rising,

               Nor that riding to sleep

       I should hear him fly with the high fields

And wake 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.