FERN HILL by 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 fo the apple towns

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

 Trail with daisies and barley

 Down the rivers fo 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 hornm 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 hig as the house, the tunes from teh chimneys, it was air

 and plying, 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 brith of the simple light

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

 Our 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 ong,

 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 monring songs

 Befor ethe 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 throughed loft by the shadow o fmy 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.