I See the Boys of Summer

“I see the boys of summer” consists of three separate sections. The first two sections have four stanzas, and the last section contains a single stanza. All stanzas are six lines long, or sestets. The poem doesn’t follow a strict rhyme scheme, although Thomas does utilize slant rhymes, alliteration, and refrains. Thomas also uses various grammatical punctuations—commas, periods, and semicolons—to establish and maintain a deliberate and thoughtful pace. While sectioning the stanzas separates parts of the poem, the imagery, tone, and style remain complementary and develop a singular commentary on creation and destruction.

In the first section, the first stanza opens with an unidentified first-person narrator watching the titular boys of summer. Immediately, Thomas creates juxtaposing images, contrasting summer and gold with ruin and barren: “I see the boys of summer in their ruin / Lay the gold tithings barren,” (1-3). There is warmth and gold in the world, but the boys are ruinous, and they take. Thomas uses the rest of the stanza to imbue the boys with more power, which they use destructively. The boys search for girls, but their love is cold, and they’ll destroy harvested food along the way: “Of frozen loves they fetch their girls, / And drown the cargoed apples in their tides” (5-6). By the end of the first stanza, Thomas crafts images of warmth and nature that contrast with the ruin caused by the boys.

The second stanza continues with the boys’ ruinous narrative. In the summer, the boys are in their youth. Summer shines on them, but they are foolish and wasteful: “These boys of light are curdlers in their folly, / Sour the boiling honey;” (7-8). With the boys, Thomas depicts young men full of life and energy, but they bring destruction in their wake, showing that life and death are interconnected, one feeding the other. Thomas ends the stanza by introducing darkness, which the boys embrace: “Of doubt and dark they feed their nerves; / The signal moon is zero in their voids” (11-12). Throughout the second stanza, the boys are bright and youthful, but they’re also agents of cold, full of darkness and doubt.

The third stanza widens the scope of the poem. The first line is similar to the opening line of the poem but concerns all children, and their mothers: “I see the summer children in their mothers” (13). Division and contrast, particularly with light and darkness, dominate the rest of the stanza. Time is split by night and day, which people embrace: “Of sun and moon they paint their dams” (17-18). The stanza is less dramatic in tone than the first two. Nothing rots, or is drowned or frozen, but people, including mothers carrying their babies, divide their lives between light and dark, night and day.

The fourth stanza is the last of the first section and further synthesizes Thomas’s artistic decisions so far. Like the first and third stanzas, the first-person narrator returns in the opening line, foreseeing grim futures for the boys: “I see that from these boys shall men of nothing” (19). While the boys are destructive, their futures bleak, they carry the light and warmth they consume throughout their lives: “Of love and light bursts in their throats. / O see the pulse of summer in the ice.” (23-24). The boys bring decay, but they’re also vessels of light; they become representations of how life and death are always connected, feeding off each other. Stylistically, Thomas continues to avoid a strict rhyme scheme, but still achieves a distinct cadence. The second and third lines of the fourth stanza, for example, use slant rhyme and punctuation to achieve a rhythmic start-and-stop sound: “Stature by seedy shifting, / Or lame the air with leaping from its heats;” (20-21). Shifting and leaping create a slant rhyme, and the comma and semicolon at the end of each line encourage pauses. Additionally, Line 20 is composed of mostly two-syllable words, and Line 21 begins with a series of one-syllable words. Line 20 is denser, slower, then speeds up going into Line 21, achieving a unique cadence.

The fifth stanza opens the second section of the poem and adds new commentary to Thomas’s developing themes and uses new personifications. In the first section, the boys of summer are full of heat and light but bring cold and decay. The opening lines of the second section don’t bemoan this relationship: “But seasons must be challenged or they totter / Into a chiming quarter / Where, punctual as death, we ring the stars;” (25-27). Even the pleasantries of summer must be challenged, by the boys for instance. Line 27 also reveals a new perspective, a first-person plural, suggesting a new voice for the second section. Winter and the night are personified in the remaining lines of the stanza: “There, in his night, the black-tongued bells / The sleepy man of winter pulls, / Nor blows back moon-and-midnight as she blows.” (28-30). Winter becomes a sleepy man. Moon-and-midnight, a woman. They pull and blow, creating bodily images for natural events—the coming of winter and night—increasing the poem’s vivid imagery of the seasons through personification.

The sixth stanza dives further into the second perspective introduced in the previous stanza. The first-person plural announces its power and agency, intending to control life and death: “We are the dark derniers let us summon / Death from a summer woman, / A muscling life from lovers in their cramp” (31-33). Words like dark, summon, and death create a darker tone, and Line 33 paints an evocative image by connecting life and lovers with muscles and cramps. The stanza stays in this mode, creating more stark images by describing the fair dead and bright-eyed worms, but the closing line suggests new growth will be planted and harvested: “And from the planted womb the man of straw” (36).

The seventh stanza reveals the plural speakers’ identity and evokes strong imagery of the speakers’ desire to dominate nature. The first line is similar to the opening line of the poem, but with the perspective shifted to the boys: “We summer boys in this four-winded spinning,” (37). The first-person plural is the summer boys, previously viewed from a distance in the first section. The boys reside in a four-winded spinning, what might be the cycle of the four seasons. In the rest of the stanza, the boys boast of their ability to control the natural world: “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” (39-42). Images of the ocean being held and the desert being choked are evocative and intense, enhancing the poem’s dramatic tone, and portray man’s relationship with nature as intense and visceral.

The eighth stanza shifts to a new season and becomes more intimate in scope. Winter fades to spring, and the boys mark their foreheads with crosses using holly: “In spring we cross our foreheads with the holly, / Heigh ho the blood and berry,” (43-44). Shaping crosses using holly likely references Ash Wednesday, a holy day in Christianity that begins Lent, a time of repentance, suggesting that while the boys are mischievous and destructive, they’re capable of remorse. Love, like life and death, goes through cycles of abundance and absence, and the boys’ comment on this in Lines 45-47. Love is likened to a muscle, giving it strength, but also tangibility, capable of tiring and dying. Interweaving spring and repentance with dying love contributes to the poem’s somber tone, but Thomas ends the second section with hope, creating a sense of bittersweetness: “O see the poles of promise in the boys” (48).

The ninth stanza is the final one, and the only stanza in the third section. The first line is a modified refrain of the opening line of the poem, informing the reader that the speaker is shifting again, perhaps to the first narrator again: “I see you boys of summer in your ruin.” (49). Man is strongly associated with death in the second line, describing a barren landscape of maggots. The desires of the boys, perhaps, were fruitless, leading to nothing, as the first narrator foretold earlier in the poem. However, the final lines of the poem conclude “I see the boys of summer” with a tender image: “O see the poles are kissing as they cross” (54). The poles may refer to opposite ends, like life and death, winter and summer, embracing as they move along. By ending with the poles kissing, Thomas shows that life and death, creativity and destruction, are ultimately connected in a cohesive relationship.