Horses
by Edwin Muir
This poem is about how that when Edwin was a small child his parents owned a farm and he would watch the horses.Thus, it is about a past memory which arises struggle and conflict inside the speaker’s mind between dark and light , good and evil as well as purity and experience. The poem is highly symbolic one as it expresses the double aspects of nature which bares the wildness as well as innocence.
The attitude of the poet in the poem is that he is scared of the horses as they frighten him as he says (They seemed terrible so wild and strange.) He starts the poem by saying that he was staring out of the window of his home and how that he was watching the horses working on the fields (Those lumbering horses in the steady plough.) Edwin seems to fear the horses as he remembers the size of them when he was a small boy he says (They seemed so wild and so strange.) He thinks that he has returned to when he was a small boy by saying (Perhaps some childish hour has come again.)
In the next Stanza he says when he would watch these horses they moved very slow with the plough behind them the quote for this is (Their hooves like pistons in an ancient mill.) Also another quote, which goes with this, is (Moves up and down yet seems standing still.) When you look at pistons all that they do is go up and down very fast but never look like they are moving forward just up and down just like the horses he saw. Edwin tries to go on about how the horses are very dangerous and that they could be very dangerous by saying (Their conquering hooves which trod the stubble down.) He says (And their great hulk) so from his childhood view these are very large and now he cannot see what is so scary about them. In the fifth verse he uses many words to do with fire when he is describing the horses. He is again carrying on the theme about there mysterious and dangerous and he says (And warm and glowing with a mysterious fire.) He says that the horses have a fire inside them and that is why he uses all these words to do with fire. He says that they look a lot larger at night (They came and they seemed gigantic in the gloom.) As children have very vivid imaginations this is why they would look a lot scarier at night than in daytime. Again to do with the power which these horses have he says there eyes (Gleamed with a cruel apocalyptic light.) Then near the end of the poem he says (Ah now it fades! It fades!) He users repetition to say that he is now come out of his dream of his youth spent on his family farm. Then in the last verse he says (Where the blank field and still standing tree.) He has visited the sight and that is all that is left of the farm.
