Speaker or Narrator, and Point of View
first-person speaker; by someone looking back at his childhood
Form and Meter
Open verse. Each stanza has 9 lines and follows this pattern: Line 1 and 2 have 14 syllables, line 3 has 9 syllables, line 4 has 6 syllables, line 5 has 9 syllables., line 6 and 7 have 14 syllables, line 8 has 7 syllables, line 9 has 9 syllables.
Metaphors and Similes
Similes:
“like a wanderer white/ with the dew": This simile invokes an image of purity, which white often represents, and the innocence and promise of a new morning ("dew")
“in my chains like the sea”: This mournful simile is far more abstract. The moon controls the tides; perhaps the speaker feels equally controlled and confined in the adult world.
Alliteration and Assonance
Assonance: repeated assonant slant rhymes throughout the poem
Alliteration: “mercy of his means,” “huntsman and herdsman,” “clear and cold”
Irony
Genre
Poetry
Setting
Fern Hill
Tone
Remorseful
Protagonist and Antagonist
Major Conflict
Climax
Foreshadowing
Understatement
Allusions
Adam and Eve, the Pied Piper
Metonymy and Synecdoche
Personification
“lilting house," "Time let me hail and climb /Golden in the heydays of his eyes," "In the sun that is young once only, " Time let me play and be /Golden in the mercy of his means, " "the cock on his shoulder," "the whinnying green stable "
