Dylan Thomas and Adam and Eve

Dylan Thomas and Adam and Eve

Dylan Thomas wrote the lines “I know the legend/Of Adam and Eve is never for a second/Silent in my service,” in Ceremony After a Fire Raid, one of his many brilliant emotional poems about the fire-bombings of World War II and one of his many acknowledgements of the metaphor of Adam and Eve, so influential in his poetry.

I think his idea of Eden may have been the distant farms of Carmarthenshire and his boathouse at Laugharne - the town was the inspiration for the fishing village in the wonderful Under Milk Wood:

Dylan Thomas Boathouse

This is the wider view from the south. Laugharne's castle is right on the foreshore.

Laugharne

The quotes in the main section of this chapter are from Fern Hill, his masterpiece of 1946. Is there a better poem about being young, about being Adam? I equate it with Yeats' Byzantium masterpiece about aging...