In ‘The Thought-Fox’ Ted Hughes the writer of the poem was in his early 20’s when he wrote the poem in 1955. It was one of Ted Hughes’s earliest poems. He was born on 17th August 1930 and he died on 28th October 1998, aged 68. He was appointed Poet Laureate on 19th December 1984 in succession to the late John Betjeman.
The other poem, ‘The Thought-Fox’, ‘The Thought-Fox’ is a poem about writing a poem. Its external action takes place in a room late at night where the poet is sitting alone at his desk. Outside the night is starless, silent, and totally black. But the poet senses a presence which disturbs him, there is ‘a fox’s nose’ touching a ‘twig’ then ‘leaf’. The fox ‘sets neat prints into the snow’ as the writer is printing the poem but this all disappears as the poem ends with the fox entering the dark hole of the persons head simulating the human mind and ‘the page is printed’ which means that the poet has finished his poem.
The poem ‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’ has a rhyme scheme of ‘ABACC’ and has four regular beats to the poem. The rhyming is strict and it is written in the ‘I’ form to say that it was a personal experience. The poet repeat the word ‘dancing’ to emphasize the fact that the ‘daffodils’ were ‘dancing’. He also uses a lot of joyful language like ‘glee’, ‘jocund’ and ‘gay’, this is to show how happy and delighted the person is, at seeing so many daffodils in the forest, and to him is a magnificent sight. The poet describes the daffodils in an anthropomorphic manner, because he is giving the qualities of humans to a non-human thing, the ‘daffodils’. The person thinks that the daffodils are one of God’s creations and he contracts the daffodils brightness and ‘shines’ with a ‘twinkle on the Milky Way’, a marvelous creation by God.
The poem ‘The Thought-Fox’ has no real rhyme at all; it is enjambment sometimes too, meaning there is no punctuation at the end of some of the stanzas ‘something else is alive’ and ‘beside the clock’s loneliness’ both have no punctuation at the end of their stanzas. The poem uses a lot of alliteration and‘s’ to give it the quiet silent feeling. The poem in general, represents the workings of the mind because of the ‘sudden’ changes of actions in the poem, ‘sudden sharp hot stink of fox’. Also at the beginning of the poem the fox appears out of nowhere, simulating the mind because before there was a fox, there was nothing and as if it was random a fox comes into the poem ‘A fox’s nose touches twig’.
Both ‘The Thought-Fox’ and ‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’ are about people doing things alone hence the ‘loneliness’ in ‘The Thought-Fox’ and ‘lonely’ in ‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’. There is also something that happens ‘suddenly’ in both poems when in ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud’ the person sees a ‘host of golden daffodils’ and in ‘The Thought-Fox’ the person ‘suddenly’ smells a ‘sharp hot stink of fox’.
The poems are both written in the ‘I’ form to show that it was a personal experience, also it makes the reader reading it feels more connected to the poet and what he is trying to tell us. In ‘The Thought-Fox’ the poet tries to make us feel the way the mind works and how things act very ‘suddenly’ in the mind. But in ‘I Wandered As Lonely As A Cloud’ the poet tries to describe the beauty of the ‘host of golden daffodils’, by using descriptive and words that have strong meaning, like ‘sparkling’ and ‘jocund’ this makes the reader understand the point in which the poet is trying to get across.
‘The Thought-Fox’ is written as an internal experience which the poet has gone through within the mind, finding out about how his mind works and how ‘suddenly’ things happen in the mind. But ‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’ is written from an external experience, where the poet has gone and seen the ‘daffodils’ then wrote a poem about them and their beauty.
The poem ‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’ started off very peaceful as someone was walking through the countryside forest, but he stumbles upon a ‘host, of golden daffodils’. In the ‘The Thought-Fox’ the poem starts off as lonely and a lifeless atmosphere but later it becomes more alive as a fox comes in to the poem ‘suddenly’, but is all ‘suddenly’ all goes, as the fox ‘enters the dark hole of the head’ and the ‘page is printed’ and the poem ends.
‘The Thought-Fox’ is an irregular poem in that there is no rhyme scheme and sometimes there is enjambment whereas in ‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’ is a regular poem because of the perfect rhyme and punctuation at the end of each stanza also the four steady beats gives it a calm and even feeling about the poem.
