Explore "Hold Hard, these Ancient Minutes" by Dylan Thomas on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Hold hard, these ancient minutes in the cuckoo's month, / Under the lank, fourth folly on Glamorgan's hill, / As the green blooms ride upward, to the drive of time; / Time, in a folly's rider, like a county man
Over the vault of ridings with his hound at heel, / Drives forth my men, my children, from the hanging south.
Hold hard, my country children in the world of tales, / The greenwood dying as the deer fall in their tracks, / This first and steepled season, to the summer's game.
And now the horns of England, in the sound of shape, / Summon your snowy horsemen, and the four-stringed hill,
Over the sea-gut loudening, sets a rock alive; / Hurdles the guns and railings, as the boulders heave, / Crack like a spring in a vice, bone breaking April, / Spill the lank folly's hunter and the hard-held hope.
Down fall four padding weathers on the scarlet lands,
Stalking my children's faces with a tail of blood, / Time, in a rider rising, from the harnessed valley; / Hold hard, my county darlings, for a hawk descends, / Golden Glamorgan straightens, to the falling birds.
Your sport is summer as the spring runs angrily.