Sleepy Sunday

For various reasons, not unconnected with the last post, I didn't get alot of sleep last night, so this afternoon after the usual happy round of morning worship and a double baptism for two delightful little girls just after lunch, I subsided on the sofa with Serafina the laptop...I was just dozing off when inspiration struck.
For the past three weeks, since the second day of our holiday in fact, I have been tormented by a line of poetry that I couldn't place. For some strange reason which even I can't fathom, I didn't feel I could just google the line...so I asked around, but even Hattie Gandhi's writing friends were stumped and so I pondered and wondered and even fulminated just a little.
And then, like magic, as Hattie Gandhi and Storytelling Photographer friend were telling me once again how completely they hadn't recognised the line it came to me.
FERN HILL!
Dylan Thomas.
I was sure of it...and with that conviction google became an instantly viable option. Within seconds there it was, complete with the line that had tormented me (the last line of the poem, if you really want to know) - and I remembered once again how beautiful this writing is, and thought of the day it was handed out to us as our first piece of Practical Criticism with Deeply Scary Don in my first term at Cambridge. Despite my terror, I adored the poem and I still do.

FERN HILL

 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.