I See The Boys Of Summer
I
I
see
the
boys
of
summer
in
their
ruin
Lay
the
gold
tithings
barren,
Setting
no
store
by
harvest,
freeze
the
soils;
There
in
their
heat
the
winter
floods
Of
frozen
loves
they
fetch
their
girls,
And
drown
the
cargoed
apples
in
their
tides.
These
boys
of
light
are
curdlers
in
their
folly,
Sour
the
boiling
honey;
The
jacks
of
frost
they
finger
in
the
hives;
There
in
the
sun
the
frigid
threads
Of
doubt
and
dark
they
feed
their
nerves;
The
signal
moon
is
zero
in
their
voids.
I
see
the
summer
children
in
their
mothers
Split
up
the
brawned
womb's
weathers,
Divide
the
night
and
day
with
fairy
thumbs;
There
in
the
deep
with
quartered
shades
Of
sun
and
moon
they
paint
their
dams
As
sunlight
paints
the
shelling
of
their
heads.
I
see
that
from
these
boys
shall
men
of
nothing
Stature
by
seedy
shifting,
Or
lame
the
air
with
leaping
from
its
hearts;
There
from
their
hearts
the
dogdayed
pulse
Of
love
and
light
bursts
in
their
throats.
O
see
the
pulse
of
summer
in
the
ice.
II
But
seasons
must
be
challenged
or
they
totter
Into
a
chiming
quarter
Where,
punctual
as
death,
we
ring
the
stars;
There,
in
his
night,
the
black-tongued
bells
The
sleepy
man
of
winter
pulls,
Nor
blows
back
moon-and-midnight
as
she
blows.
We
are
the
dark
deniers,
let
us
summon
Death
from
a
summer
woman,
A
muscling
life
from
lovers
in
their
cramp,
From
the
fair
dead
who
flush
the
sea
The
bright-eyed
worm
on
Davy's
lamp,
And
from
the
planted
womb
the
man
of
straw.
We
summer
boys
in
this
four-winded
spinning,
Green
of
the
seaweed's
iron,
Hold
up
the
noisy
sea
and
drop
her
birds,
Pick
the
world's
ball
of
wave
and
froth
To
choke
the
deserts
with
her
tides,
And
comb
the
county
gardens
for
a
wreath.
In
spring
we
cross
our
foreheads
with
the
holly,
Heigh
ho
the
blood
and
berry,
And
nail
the
merry
squires
to
the
trees;
Here
love's
damp
muscle
dries
and
dies,
Here
break
a
kiss
in
no
love's
quarry.
O
see
the
poles
of
promise
in
the
boys.
III
I
see
the
boys
of
summer
in
their
ruin.
Man
in
his
maggot's
barren.
And
boys
are
full
and
foreign
in
the
pouch.
I
am
the
man
your
father
was.
We
are
the
sons
of
flint
and
pitch.
O
see
the
poles
are
kissing
as
they
cross.
Dylan Thomas
Dylan Thomas (born October 27, 1914, Swansea, Glamorgan [now in Swansea], Wales—died November 9, 1953, New York, New York, U.S.) Welsh poet and prose writer whose work is known for its comic exuberance, rhapsodic lilt, and pathos. His personal life, punctuated by reckless bouts of drinking, was notorious. Thomas spent his childhood in southwestern Wales. His father taught English at the Swansea grammar school, which in due course the boy attended. Because Dylan’s mother was a farmer’s daughter, he had a country home he could go to when on holiday. His poem “Fern Hill” (1946) describes its joys.