Horses by Edwin Muir poem and summary, Green Studies (AG46D) Elective Paper, B.A English Literature, 3rd Year 6th Semester, University of Madras

B.A English Literature

3rd Year 6th Semester

Elective Paper 

GREEN STUDIES (AG46D)

5.4 “Horses” by Edwin Muir

About Poem

          The Horses’ is one of the best-known and most widely studied poems by the Scottish poet Edwin Muir (1887-1959). The poem (not to be confused with Muir’s early poem ‘Horses’) was published in his 1956 final collection One Foot in Eden.

This period is also, for the most part, more positive in outlook than his early work, although, paradoxically, the most anthologised poem of this group, ’The Horses’, deals with his fears for the Cold War and his growing realisation of the nuclear age. Echoing and subverting the seven‐day creation in Genesis, the poem depicts the aftermath of an unspecified world war which has rendered useless the machinery and illusory benefits of the modern age. The “radios dumb” and obsolete planes and tractors force the survivors to remember an older way of life, long aban‐ doned; their return to the plough seen as the revitalisation of a lost communion between man and the world, ’Far past our fa‐ thers’ land’.

          In 53 lines, Muir creates a kind of modern neo-Christian fable, describing in literal and symbolic terms the devastated world and the arrival of the horses. The narrative follows the collective mind of the survivors as they put the past behind them and look to the future.

 

Poem:

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.

Summary:

          The speaker is a spokeperson for a group of survivors. They tell of the strange horses come to renew their hope, symbols of the natural spirit, innocence and strength.

Lines 1–3

The war is over, the whole world quietened and strange horses have arrived. This is the opening image which would surely suit a movie or documentary, with the text as commentary. The recent past is about to unfold.

It's unusual to see an adverb start a poem and to discover an archaic word in the same line, twelvemonth, a dialect word which means a year. There's a mix of the matter-of-fact and the fairytale—twelvemonth/seven days . . . put the world to sleep and then the strange horses appeared.

Enjambment, where one line runs on into the next without punctuation, occurs immediately. The seven days war has ended (not that long for a war), and it must have been devastating because the world is no longer awake.

This is no conventional war, this is atomic or nuclear war.

Lines 4–6

To make a covenant is to make a deal or agreement. In this context the survivors must have come to some sort of collective decision—the silence was all they had, and they agreed to accept it, to bond with it. Perhaps they agreed that such a war should never happen again.

This act indirectly calls up the old testament story of Noah's Ark. Noah built the ark to save the animals from drowning in the flood, sent by God to cleanse the world of sin. When the flood waters receded Noah saw a rainbow—this was God's sign, covenant, that never again would the earth be flooded.

So silent was their world they could hear their own breathing and this frightened them. Is this factual or figurative? Once the noise of war had died down, the silence must have been disturbing, especially since everything had been killed? Animals, wildlife and the majority of humankind?

Lines 7–8

The radios failed on the second day we are told in a short line that is cut off prematurely. Power of communication to the outside world is lost. Electrical technology is of no use.

This fact means so much. Imagine having been through the most terrible of wars, surviving somehow, when all of a sudden your one hope, getting in touch with someone somewhere, asking for help, using the last piece of tech that functions . . . no longer works.

A sure sign that your modern, sophisticated world that existed prior to the war is now no more.

Lines 9–20

More sightings follow, of a warship carryng dead bodies, and a plane crashing into the sea on a final mission gone wrong. The death throes of the war are taking place, on the third and sixth days.

Their radio is definitely kaputt. But even it worked, like millions more all over the world, they wouldn't answer, they wouldn't want to engage with voices from the bad world, the previous system that developed and finally employed the worst of weaponry.

A subtle change in syntax reflects the altered tone and the repeated words If/And underline the certainty of the speaker. Now way would they wish to go back to what they had before.

Repetition of small words and phrases . . . If/And/We would not . . . helps reinforce the message of stubborn resistance. There will be no going back to the previous age.

In line 19, there is mention of children being swallowed at one great gulp by the bad old world. Muir's liking for Greek mythology is apparent here as this directly relates to the story of Cronos (Kronos) leader of the Titans, offspring of Gaia and Uranus, the earth and sky. When children were born to him he promptly ate them for fear of being overpowered or killed.

Lines 21–23

The bigger picture is laid before the reader. Like embryos forming in a womb in foetal position, nations lie asleep, victims of the war. Use of the word asleep suggests that there will be an opportunity, eventually, to wake. At least these nations are not yet dead; they have life, they are only dormant.

Lines 24–30

Another vivid image comes into focus, that of tractors, those powerful machines that formerly worked so hard on the land. Once indispensable, they are now rusting, left for the elements.

The tractors are menacing and are given zoomorphic status in a simile . . . like dank sea-monsters. Note also the one line spoken by someone in the collective, the line with moulder and loam—the tractors will rot away (moulder) and become like the soil (loam).

Perhaps surprisingly oxen are still around. They go back further than the horse in the history of farming and were an integral part of medieval working of the fields.

Lines 31–32

A repeat of the third line—those strange horses appear late one summer evening.

Lines 33–35

The collective voice of the speaker describes the sounds of the horses as they approach. First comes their distant tapping which then changes into drumming before turning into thunder at the corner of the road.

This gradual build-up and use of different verbs helps to intensify the image—here come the plough-horses running, then momentarily stopping before heading off again louder and louder towards the waiting survivors.

Lines 36–37

A shortened line brings a certain emphasis and enjambment takes the reader from the horse's heads on into a maritime simile . . . like a wild wave charging which is full of fearsome energy.

The group were afraid of the strange horses.

Lines 38–41

Mention of fathers' time gives a rudimentary historical context to the scene. Horses in the past had been sold and the money used to buy machines, tractors, to work the land. The cyclical nature of farming and growing becomes apparent.

For centuries horses had been the mainstay of power on the land, pulling the ploughs across the fields, teams of strong shire horses working day after day. Then machines came along, humans developed engines that needed oil and fuel and the ubiquitous tractor quickly took over from living horsepower.

Now the tables had been turned. Tractors were rotting away, and oxen were used instead. But the appearance of the horses took the survivors by surprise and all they could think of was ancient symbolism—horses on knight's shields or in illustrated medieval books.

This militaristic viewpoint harks back to a time when the horse was an indispensable animal, crucial to human endeavour and ironically, warfare.

Lines 42–45

The group didn't approach the horses; they were scared. The horses waited for something to happen. There's an air of uncertainty in these lines as both parties weigh each other up, and the whole situation.

Generations of humans hadn't worked with horses on the land. Horses had been mere leisure animals, for racing, for pleasure. But now in the aftermath of a devastating war here was a situation of rare quality—horse and human facing each other, the ancient bonds attempting to reunite.

The speaker's musings are understandable, if a little mythical. Mention of the old command suggests a mysterious connection between the horses and the gods, or God. They purposefully ended up in this place because, as ordered, a new relationship was to be formed, based on the old traditions.

Lines 46–47

Initially the survivors wanted nothing to do with ownership or useage—the horses were seen as equal, living beings on a ravaged planet. This sets the tone for the future.

Lines 48–50

Among the horses are colts, male foals, born somewhere out back in the wilderness. They represent the future, the new times to be. Note the biblical reference to Eden, the garden of Eden, God's garden in the book of Genesis.

Lines 51–53

The horses of their own free will now work the land, ploughing and carrying loads for the group. For these frightened survivors the horses' arrival has turned things round, changed everything. They have a new beginning. Out of war and destruction comes peace and creativity. 

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