Fern Hill Themes

Rather than just a clock ticking on the wall, Time in "Fern Hill" is almost like a character. Thomas personifies time throughout the poem, as something with immense power. At first, he's the guy wh...

You're only young once, and all those other clichés. For the speaker of "Fern Hill," youth is everything it should be—joyful, carefree, and oh so fleeting. And that's kind of the problem. It's e...

Normally, the idea of being foolish isn't exactly a good thing. But then again, there's that saying, "ignorance is bliss." And maybe that's more applicable to the speaker of "Fern Hill," who's tell...

It's next to impossible not to hear the happiness of the speaker in "Fern Hill." From the first line, through all of the first five stanzas, the speaker is praising his youth as a time of joy. And...

If the speaker of "Fern Hill" made one mistake as a youth, it's that he failed to realize that being young doesn't last forever. So at the beginning of the poem, we've got a footloose and fancy fre...