Fern Hill - Richard Burton

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