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.
With merry solemnity Frost proclaims that his younger self was “Prince of the Apple Towns” – alluding to childhood games among nature (and thus linking nostalgia for childhood with nature)
Fern Hill