Compare and Contrast Horses by Edwin Muir and Pike by Ted Hughes

Harry YandleEnglishMr Evans Compare and Contrast “Horses” by Edwin Muir and “Pike” by Ted Hughes ________________ Both “Horses” by Edwin Muir and “Pike” have a title which is a clear statement of intent on what the poem is about. However both of these poems seem to symbolise something more complex, on top of the simple animal poem which it could be interpreted as. Both Ted Hughes and Edwin Muir, ‘animal poets’ have a pastoral lust for the countryside and were writing around the time when Darwin published his “Origin of Species”; This could explain why both poets seem to portray their respective animals rather negatively and yet in conclusion, the poets seem to relish nature despite being fearful of it; “I must pine // Again for that dread country crystalline”. Edwin Muir has a paradoxical wishing for the dreadful country side as it has been taken away from him and hast lost the magic and down-to-earth innocence he had as a child. Hughes’s poetry however dwells on the innate violence in the natural world and on instinctive predatory behaviour; yet he sees to view it as appropriate. He attempts to reconcile what at first appears to be a horrible violence in nature. Perhaps human beings are no different from a creature such as the pike, driven by impulse and appetite in a universe that follows no moral law but eat or be eaten. Hughes clearly views

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