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 c*** 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