In this article I have taken three of Dylan Thomas’ famous poems, Poem in October, Fern Hill and The Force That Through the Green Fuse, and analysed the shared underlying theme of childhood which is evident throughout.

In the three poems, Thomas talks about what it is like to be young. In Fern Hill, describes his childhood as being “happy as the grass was green”; the fact that grass is green shows that Thomas’ childhood was happy. He also describes his childhood as the “heydays of his eyes”, meaning they were the best days of his life. This line is cleverly linked with the poem’s farm theme where the ‘hey days’ would be when they hey would be collected on the farm. To support his idea that his childhood was a positive time for him, he writes, “I was young and easy”, which tells the reader his life was simple when he was young, unlike his complex life as an adult. He also writes that he was “happy as the heart was long”, the use of ‘the heart was long’ shows that his happiness as a child lasted as long as his heart beat.

In Poem in October, Thomas begins to talk about his childhood by telling the reader it was his “thirteenth year to heaven”, or his thirteenth birthday. He uses the word ‘heaven’ to tell the reader it was a happy time for him because of the positive connotations of heaven. The rest of the poem is used as a metaphor for his life; the journey of Thomas from the bottom of the hill to the top shows Thomas’ life stages. He speaks with a positive reminiscence as the poem takes the reader through his childhood; when talking about his childhood, Thomas uses words and phrases such as ‘summery’, ‘sweet’ and “a wonder of summer with apples, pears and red currants” which all give connotations of happiness. However, once Thomas’ beings to talk about his youth fading away, this lexical field is swapped for one of gloom and bad weather, utilising pathetic fallacy. For example, “There I could marvel my birthday, but the weather turned around” – this shows that with each birthday he lives to, his life becomes gloomier, contrasting with the positive images he puts forward when discussing his childhood, and further supporting the idea that his childhood was a happy time.