[Ttha-potm] "Childhood Among the Ferns" Poem of the Month for April 2008

[Betty Cortus]

       Childhood Among the Ferns

I sat one sprinkling day upon the lea,
Where tall-stemmed ferns spread out luxuriantly,
And nothing but those tall ferns sheltered me.

The rain gained strength, and damped each lopping frond,
Ran down their stalks beside me and beyond,
And shaped slow-creeping rivulets as I conned,

With pride, my spray-proofed house. And though anon
Some drops pierced its green rafters, I sat on,
Making pretence I was not rained upon.

The sun then burst, and brought forth a sweet breath
 From the limp ferns as they dried underneath:
I said: 'I could live on here thus till death;'

And queried in the green rays as I sate:
'Why should I have to grow to man's estate,
And this afar-noises World perambulate?'

The childish fantasy of being able to hide away in a small, safe,  
secret place – a snug cubbyhole of living greenery – cocooned from  
the troublesome outside world would, no doubt, have most young  
children wishing unconsciously to live in an eternal present moment.   
But how many eight-year-olds would follow the thought through to the  
melancholy conclusion that the entire process of normal human  
maturation was something to be shunned?  Hardy recalls in the Life a  
childhood experience of lying on his back, with the sun's rays  
streaming through the interstices of the straw hat covering his face,  
and deciding that he did not want to grow up and become a man or take  
on the responsibilities of adulthood."* It was this memory which most  
critics believe inspired this poem.

How does this early experience foreshadow the poet's assessment of  
life's value as expressed in poems such as "For Life I Had Never  
Cared Greatly"  and  "Hap"?  How typical is this of his work in general?

What correspondences (or lack of them) do you detect between the  
changing weather in the poem, soft sprinkles, followed by heavier  
rain, then a burst of sunshine,  and the speaker's shifting thought  
patterns?

Do the stanzaic triplets enhance the content of the poem?  Is the  
rather unwieldy adjectival clause  "afar-noises" in the final line a  
little too disruptive of the largely iambic pentameter meter, or is  
this one of Hardy's deliberate irregularities – an avoidance of the  
predictable, or a  "Delight in Disorder"?

You are warmly invited to share your own observations and comments on  
"Childhood Among the Ferns", poem number 846, transcribed from James  
Gibson's Variorum Edition of Thomas Hardy: The Complete Poems.   
(London: Macmillan, 1978).

When using the reply function to respond to the poem please delete  
this message and all earlier posts.

With Good Wishes,

Betty Cortus, POTM Director
bcortus at hardy-l.com


      *The Life and Work of Thomas Hardy, ed., Michael Millgate,  (U  
of Georgia P, 1985) 20.


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