Well, there's not really much of this month left, so I'm going to have this poem as the one for October too. I know it's long, and perhaps not the easiest read, but it's a lovely poem, and well worth giving a try. I recommend reading it at least twice - it really deserves a close reading, but I know not everyone has the time or the patience for that. I do feel it's deeply apropriate to these months, though. This is a poem full of nostalgia for the ending of of childhood, and of summer, so as I, and many of the other patrons, pack off for University, and as we all feel autumn closing in, perhaps reading this will help you capture the mood - bring a smile, or a tear, to your eye.

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 windfall light. And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,                And 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 night-jars                Flying with the ricks, and the horses                     Flashing into the dark. And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white With dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all               Shining, it was Adam and the 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 cared I, 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 sand in my chains like the sea.

By Dylan Thomas

"That was a crap poem, the man was talking nonsense - take me back to the Den"