The theme of loss of childhood in the poem,"Poem in October".

"Poem in October", a superb lyric by Dylan Thomas, is a poem of birthday celebration, which is published in "Death and Entrances" in 1946. Though the poem is a celebration, inherently it has a deeper significance. The poet here laments for the loss of childhood as Vaughan did in "The Retreat" and Wordsworth in "Immortality Ode".Thomas here gives the vivid description of the memories and the elation of his childhood days.

             The poet in his 30th birthday, awaking by the sound of 'harbour and neighbour wood', by the sound of 'mussel',a kind of fish and the 'heron', by the "water praying,and call of seagull and rook/ And the knock of sailing boatson the net webbed wall", arrives to the hilly area by crossing the border of the land. And after seeing the natural beauty of the hilly land, the poet reminds the glory and beauty of his childhood --
          "A springful larks in a rolling/Cloud and the roadside bushes brimming with whistling/ Blackbirds and the sun of October/ Summery/ On the hill's shoulder,/ Here were fond climates and sweet singers suddenly."

                 But the poet's joyous and jubilant mood of mind has become melancholic and morbid in the very last line of the 4th stanza: "but the weather turned around". The repitition  of the same line at the last stanza emphasizes the melancholic attitude of the poet.

               The poet now belongs to the mature age. He mourns that in this stage he is departing from the "blithy country", from "the other air", from "the blue altered sky" of the childhood stage. He has become nostalgic about his childhood and tries his best to recapitulate the memory of childhood:
         "And I saw in the turning so clearly a child's / Forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother/ Through the parables/ Of sunlight/ And the legends of the green chapels."

                  The poet remember those days when as a child he had shed tears. But now these tears come as fire to his cheek: "That his tears burned my cheeks and his heart moved in mine." That's why he wants to become a child again through his "viewless wings of imagination". The poet when he was a child might have found mistery innature, and now the songs of the birds and the murmur of the flowing waters appear to the poet as the potent symbols of mystery:
          "And the mystery/ Sang alive/ Still in the waters and singing birds."

                   The poet's tone has become more melancholic in the last stanza. He comes to realize his present condition.  Like Keats, he perhapsseems to feel the sordid truth that "Fancy cannot cheat so well she olis famed to do."

                   The general mood of the poem, "Poem in October" is the mingling of joy and melancholy. The poet on his 30th birthday expresses his profound nostalgia over the departing and vanishing glory of his childhood days. He wants to reget the happiness and mirth of childhood. But he is also much aware that it is impossible because "all the gardens if spring and summer " are now turned into "October blood" and this is too pathetic to our poet.