I See the Boys of Summer

“I see the boys of summer” channels many of the aesthetic choices seen with the Romantic artists of the previous centuries. Aesthetically, Romanticism pushed against the rigid constraints of Classicism, embracing an emotional tone, and thematically focused on individualism and glorifying nature. Thomas paints strong images of nature throughout his poem. In the first section, scenes of the lightness and darkness of the natural world appear in every stanza. Nature also provides abundance: apples, honey, new life. Thomas’s verb choice in the first section likewise elicits strong emotions. The boys drown the cargoed apples in Line 4, sour honey in Line 6, and light bursts from their throats in Line 23. In the second section, Stanzas 5-8, Thomas continues crafting vivid depictions of the natural world and embeds them with emotions. Winter personified as a sleepy man in Line 29 makes winter’s agency feel purposeful, and the seventh stanza roars with images of boys and men uprooting the ocean and choking the desert. The poem repeatedly embraces a strong, willful emotion, combined with vivid and creative descriptions of the natural world, and the final section reiterates this. Men may stand in ruin, but they are also laborers, workers of the land: “We are the sons of flint and pitch” (53).