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Barely a twelvemonth after
The seven days war that put the world to sleep,
Late in the evening the strange horses came.
By then we had made our covenant with silence,
But in the first few days it was so still
We listened to our breathing and were afraid.
On the second day
The radios failed; we turned the knobs; no answer.
On the third day a warship passed us, heading north,
Dead bodies piled on the deck. On the sixth day
A plane plunged over us into the sea. Thereafter
Nothing. The radios dumb;
And still they stand in corners of our kitchens,
And stand, perhaps, turned on, in a million rooms
All over the world. But now if they should speak,
If on a sudden they should speak again,
If on the stroke of noon a voice should speak,
We would not listen, we would not let it bring
That old bad world that swallowed its children quick
At one great gulp. We would not have it again.
Sometimes we think of the nations lying asleep,
Curled blindly in impenetrable sorrow,
And then the thought confounds us with its strangeness.
The tractors lie about our fields; at evening
They look like dank sea-monsters couched and waiting.
We leave them where they are and let them rust:
'They'll molder away and be like other loam.'
We make our oxen drag our rusty plows,
Long laid aside. We have gone back
Far past our fathers' land.
And then, that evening
Late in the summer the strange horses came.
We heard a distant tapping on the road,
A deepening drumming; it stopped, went on again
And at the corner changed to hollow thunder.
We saw the heads
Like a wild wave charging and were afraid.
We had sold our horses in our fathers' time
To buy new tractors. Now they were strange to us
As fabulous steeds set on an ancient shield.
Or illustrations in a book of knights.
We did not dare go near them. Yet they waited,
Stubborn and shy, as if they had been sent
By an old command to find our whereabouts
And that long-lost archaic companionship.
In the first moment we had never a thought
That they were creatures to be owned and used.
Among them were some half a dozen colts
Dropped in some wilderness of the broken world,
Yet new as if they had come from their own Eden.
Since then they have pulled our plows and borne our loads
But that free servitude still can pierce our hearts.
Our life is changed; their coming our beginning.
Edwin Muir
Read poems about / on: sea, world, sometimes, sorrow, war, silence, summer, children, sleep, lost, father, horse, change, child
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Click here to write your comments about this poem (The Horses by Edwin Muir)
Cassie Best (11/20/2007 12:08:00 PM)
The poem The Horses is one of the most descriptive and imagery poems i have read in a while. The horses symbolized the way of life that our grandfathers lived and then over the years we become more dependent on technology. It showes a how we have evolved from buggies and wagons to tractors and other machines. Even though we have left the horses behind and forgot about them they were there for us when the technology (machines let us down) . I also thought the part about the radios was really bold and discriptive part.
'The radios failed; we turned the knobs; no answer.
On the third day a warship passed us, heading north,
Dead bodies piled on the deck. On the sixth day
A plane plunged over us into the sea. Thereafter
Nothing. The radios dumb;
And still they stand in corners of our kitchens,
And stand, perhaps, turned on, in a million rooms
All over the world. But now if they should speak,
If on a sudden they should speak again,
If on the stroke of noon a voice should speak,
We would not listen, we would not let it bring'
After reading this part i had this image of 1984 and how they had to only listen to a certain person. When i was done reading the peom i had almost drew this whole sketch of what he was discribing and i love that about poems. |
Kelly Boyce (11/20/2007 12:05:00 PM)
This poem showed me how dependent the world is on technology and if we even see something of Grandfathers time such as the horses, how much of a stranger they are to us. I wonder if we didnt have the advanced technology we have today if we wouldnt have so much problems. |
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