Essay Instructions: I need a 6 page paper on the poem by Dylan Thomas called ?FERN HILL?.
1> Discuss the poet?s use of metaphor (youth), and how it contributes to the thematic understanding of ?Fern Hill.? In addition, state the Controlling Metaphor=(time). Discuss how you determined the metaphors.
2> You must then decide upon the poets point in the work; clearly state and support it.
3> Discuss how the imagery he created in the poem helps him make his point, and contributes to your understanding of the poem. This means that you must interpret the many images he uses, explain them and show how they lead the reader to understanding the poet?s theme. In discussing this imagery, go line by line and completely explain each image that support the theme.
4> Discuss with support for each, the aspects of: connotative language, the frequent universal AND personal symbols ?(religious and non-religious), setting, simile, and character. State how they relate/support the main theme (Main theme= Aging is not as bad as perceived by people).
5> An outside literary critics opinion MUST be incorporated and compared to your own. It must be accessible via public internet for any student to access. Must be cited and referenced. No other referencing needed.
***Please write this paper with great precision, readability, and most importantly, support for every aspect listed. No fluff; just hard facts. If aspects are left out, a rewrite will be submitted.*** Please email me if something is unclear.
Our definitions:
IMAGERY: The pictorial quality of a literary work achieved through a collection of images. Evokes a complex of emotional suggestions and communicates mood, tone, and meaning.
THEME: The central or dominating idea, the message implicit in a work. Abstract concept revealed thru the elements; May be inferred by the reader.
SYMBOL: Anything that signifies or stands for something else. Could be an object, a place, a character, an action ? something concrete that stands for something abstract.
METAPHOR: An implied analogy in which one thing is imaginatively compared to or identified with another, dissimilar thing. The qualities of some thing are ascribed to something else, qualities that it ordinarily does not possess.
--------------------------------------------------
"FERN HILL", by Dylan Thomas:
poem from: http://www.bigeye.com/fernhill.htm
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.
There are faxes for this order.
