A DYLAN THOMAS SAMPLER

From VISION AND PRAYER

I turn the corner of prayer and burn In a blessing of the sudden Sun. In the name of the damned I would turn back and run To the hidden land But the loud sun Christens down The sky. I Am found. O let him Scald me and drown Me in his world's wound. His lightning answers my Cry. My voice burns in his hand. Now I am lost in the blinding One. The sun roars at the prayer's end.

From 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 . . .

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.

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