Poet's Corner

Explanation: "The Force that through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower"

Line 1

"The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower" is a complicated poem. On the first reading, it may seem almost too difficult for a beginning reader to understand. However, careful analysis will make much of the imagery clearer. As a survey of critics reveals, there is no one right explanation for the more complicated ideas in the poem. Even critics interpret lines in different, and often contradictory, ways. Since the poem is about contrast, change, and paradox, this may prove part of the poem's meaning. The first stanza in the poem is the easiest to understand. It is important to be aware of the pattern that Thomas develops in this stanza, in order to look for variations that appear later. The first three lines contrast the creative and destructive forces that surround humans. Thomas's imagery emphasizes the explosive nature of this power. The green fuse is obviously the flower's stem, yet the word "fuse" gives the connotation of explosive growth, rather than gentle development. In this line, Thomas introduces the creative force in nature. The rhyme scheme in this stanza is ababa.
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Line 2

In the first four words of this line, the power that causes growth in nature is revealed as the same force that causes the speaker to grow. Like the flower, the speaker is still in the process of growing. Green age implies youth since the word green has connotations of spring and renewal. Although green is often used in poetry to convey youth, this phrase also contains a sense of opposites; green conveys youth, while age often had the connotation of being old. Throughout the poem, Thomas will combine many seemingly opposite words.After the caesura — the pause or break in the rhythm — the destructive power is unleashed. Grammatically, the phrase refers back to the force in the first line. However, now it is a destructive power, obliterating trees by their very roots. Thomas makes it clear that the fuse which blasted the flower into existence is also the blast which destroys it.
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Line 3

Like nature, the speaker is also subject to the same fate. The change in length helps to emphasize the line's power. With three words, the speaker tells us his ultimate fate.
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Line 4

The fourth line in each stanza begins with the same six words indicating that the speaker is unable to convey his insight. Dumb has several meanings which could be applicable. While the speaker may be unable to "tell," for physical reasons, it is more likely for emotional ones, a sense of inadequacy to express the idea.Once again, Thomas combines words with opposite connotations. The rose is a symbol of beauty, of the growth described in the first line; using the adjective crooked to describe it changes our impression of the flower. Like much of Thomas's imagery, this phrase is not precise. It relies on the reader's feeling or impressions. The entire stanza leaves the reader with the impression that the crooked rose is blighted.
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Line 5

The speaker shares the same fate as the flower. he verb bent furthers the connection between the speaker and the rose as the reader understands the vigorous youth will become stooped and crooked with age, like the rose. In wintry fever, Thomas includes still another paradox as the cold of winter is blended with a fever's heat.
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Line 6

The pattern in this stanza is the same as the first, both grammatically and in the organization of ideas. However, the focus now changes from relationship between man and the biological world to man and the geological world. The force that was introduced in the first stanza pushes the water from under the earth's surface through the rocks to give birth to the mountain stream.
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Line 7

Once again, Thomas compares the speaker to nature in the first four words; the line opens with "drives" just as line 2 did, emphasizing the similarity. Blood is pushed through man's veins just as the water coursed through the rocks. Thomas frequently uses color in his poems; the red blood in this line is a counterpart to green age in the previous stanza. The contrasting element following the caesura describes these same streams dying. The alliterative half-rhyme of drives and dries reinforces this contrast.Thomas is noted for his ability to combine words to create arresting images, such as mouthing streams, which are open to a variety of interpretations. A stream's mouth is the place where it enters another body of water. Rather than being destroyed at the source like the trees in line 2, the stream dries before it reaches its destination; it is thwarted from completing its route. The word mouth will appear in two different contexts later in the stanza.
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Line 8

"Mine" in this line refers to the speaker's blood. It is turned to wax by the embalmer; it will flow no longer to sustain life, but become as solid as wax.
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Line 9

In the last stanza, the speaker was unable to communicate with the rose. In this line, his inability to express his feelings is even more poignant, since he cannot communicate with his own body. The word mouth again is used, and while to mouth in this line literally means to speak, the phrase takes on extra significance because of the repetition and variation in the use of this word.
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Line 10

Again the speaker shares nature's fate. Mouth in this line takes on an almost vampirish quality, as it sucks life away, the water from the stream, the blood from the speaker's veins.
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Line 11

The first two stanzas were extremely similar. The rhyme pattern was the same. Each image in the first found a parallel in the second. The third stanza, however, varies the pattern in several ways. The rhyme scheme will shift to a,b,a,b,c, leaving the last line unconnected to this stanza and to the previous ones.Force is replaced by hand. Force, as an abstract and general term, is easier to understand as a controller of human destiny than the very specific word, hand. In the previous stanzas, the contrasts were clear. The first line in both previous stanzas described growth and creation; the images Thomas uses here are not as clear. Water may be life-giving, but as the hand whirls it in the pool, the words join to convey a sense of danger, of the whirlpool.
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Line 12

The first four words of the second line previously connected the speaker's growth with nature's. In this line, the pronoun is left out. Instead, the hand stirs quicksand. Like the whirlpool, it is a destructive force. Both however, are limited in their ability to damage. All flowers will die; few individuals are caught in quicksand or a whirlpool. As the first half of the comparison is longer clear in its constructive nature, the destructive element is also less obvious. To rope the wind only implies control over nature.
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Line 13

Thomas includes the personal pronoun again, in the second half of the comparison. The destructive nature of the phrase is clear; the shroud means death. Indeed, the phrase conjures up visions of a type of Viking funeral as the corpse is sent to sea. Interestingly, a secondary meaning of shroud is a rope used to take pressure of the mast; this use ties the line to the ones before and after it.
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Lines 14-15

In each previous refrain, the speaker failed to communicate: to the rose, to his veins. Neither of those were new images; they followed from the first part of the stanza. The hanging man is introduced for the first time in the refrain. His connection with the details in the previous lines is vague, unless the image of a rope can be counted. Even the words hanging man are imprecise. The obvious conclusion is that he is the man who has been hung, but that is not specifically stated. He could be the hangman himself. Perhaps, it even refers to both. In the previous stanzas, the speaker looked ahead to his ultimate fate. Line 15 looks back from a future when the speaker is already clay, part of the lime-filled pit where the hangman disposes of his clients. The unattached rhyme in this line looks ahead to time in line 16.
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Line 16

This is the most difficult of the stanzas. The punctuation is different; the semi-colon isolates this line so that the first four syllables of the next line are no longer directly connected. Time is the creative and destructive force that has been operating in the previous stanzas, and now time itself becomes the focus of the poem, as time joins with the fountainhead or source. There are obvious sexual connotations in this line; the lips represent the vagina while the fountainhead is a phallic image. The use of leech as a verb here connects this line to the sucking mouth of stanza two.The rhyme scheme joins the first two lines, head and blood; lines 3 and 5 are also connected. Line 4 refers back to line 12 in the previous stanza.
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B>Lines 17-18

Thomas again combines positive and negative images in these lines, which are open to varied interpretations. The fallen blood may have sexual or birth connotations; it can be connected with Christ's blood and salvation, as well, in its calming power. These lines also foreshadow the final couplet, connecting love and death.
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Lines 19-20

Thomas has moved from a single flower to the cosmos. The speaker cannot tell the wind about the nature of time or of the heavens. The image of speaking to the wind is a powerful one. Much of this stanza is more easily felt than defined.
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Lines 21-22

The final couplet restates Thomas's theme of creativity aligned with destruction. Lover's tomb is an almost perfect symbol for love and death. The speaker, too, shares the same fate as the lovers. The last line may be interpreted in two different ways. The sheet may be viewed as a shroud, and the worm that which feeds on the corpse. The worm may also be seen as a phallic symbol and the sheet a bed sheet. Both images are integral parts of Thomas's theme. The crooked worm also returns the poem to the first stanza and the crooked rose. The poem, itself, becomes a cycle, combining conception, birth, growth, and death, all part of the same process.
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Source: Exploring Poetry, Gale, 1997.