Dylan Thomas (1914-1953).
There is a nice old pub called the Fitzroy Tavern at the bottom of Charlotte Street in Bloomsbury in London. It has a great feel to it but what I particularly like is that on the first floor it has a small room full of books and photographs and drawings dedicated to the memory of Dylan Thomas, who frequently drank there. Thomas was by many accounts a difficult man to live with, but some of his poetry is, at the risk of cliché, sublime. I am particularly drawn to his poem Fern Hill because of the wistful melancholy, of an older man looking back at his simpler youth.
High up on the wall opposite the fireplace in the Fitzroy Dylan room, there is an inscribed quote by Dylan about the timeless and ageless effect of poetry:
“A good poem is a contribution to reality, The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape of the universe, helps to extend everyone’s knowledge of himself and the world around him”
Though speaking as a poet, Dylan is reaching out, without knowing it probably, to the deeper aspects of of the nature of reality and man’s and woman’s (and indeed a mouse’s1) place and role in our beautiful universe.
Here are Dylan’s Fern Hill words, and their sad beauty:-
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.
1 Einstein is reported to have asked one of his classes this question: “When a mouse observes the universe, does that change the state of the universe?” Thankyou to @phalpern for that connection.