Fern Hill, Dylan Thomas
...towns” 7 and continuing with two stanzas to describe his growing up, the poem ends with the sixth stanza where the main character during his “lamb white days” 8 finally resigns himself to the fact that he cannot change the process of dying. No less important in the development of the conflict between the opposite elements of life and death, is the use of varying verse lengths to refer content and shape with one another. This happens by using longer verses when the speaker revels in his vivid memories and shorter verses when he returns to reality and becomes aware that his joyful youth is over. In correspondence to the verse lengths the mood also ranges from an elevated praising tone in the longer verses to a negative tone in the shorter verses. With this system in mind, Thomas arranges every single stanza mirroring itself to express the lyrical eye’s inner confusion about the course of life. The rapid decrease in length of verses one to three mirrors in the increase of verses five to seven whereas verse four functions as turning point. What follows is another shortening in the length of verses eight and nine. This sequence of narrowing-broadening-narrowing of the verse lengths in a stanza visualises the speaker’s desperate try to displace reality by refuge into his memories. But he fails, in the same way as “the sabbath rang slowly” 9 verses eight and nine of every stanza ring the bell in the speaker and make him aware that the glorious times in his vital life are over. It is striking that the intensity in which they do this is increasing from stanzas one to six. 2.2 Meter and Rhyme The poet manages to make the inconsistency of life plain by applying a number of other formal devices, two important means of which are meter and rhyme. Although difficult to define, it can be observed that a mixture between iambic, dactylic and anapestic dominates whenever the speaker is immersed in his memories, as in “Now that I was young and easy under the apple boughs” 10, which Thomas takes to express vitality and carelessness. The pure iambic meter against, as a very straight forward pattern appears in phrases like “time held me green and dying.” 11 With this monotone and desperate sequence he intends to show the speaker’s sadness about the fact that life does not last. The combination of the two patterns to a “grand, sometimes majestic, movement of his powerful and subtle”12 rhythm is accompanied by a “corresponding intensity of emotion.” 13 It makes the speaker’s distraction about the course of life even more understandable for the reader. It is not only the meter but also the rhyme scheme which show this distraction. In a kind of contradiction to structure and content, it puts the emphasis on the fifth stanza which, being located in the centre of the nine verses, rhymes impure with two other verses, verses four and nine. The first four verses show similar sounds as their corresponding partners of verses five to nine so that they follow the pattern ‘abcddabcd’. This close relation between the single verses also has a strong effect on the content, too, especially the similarity of sounds between verses four, five and nine which help to create the link between present and past and intensify the speaker’s desire to be...