'Horses Poem – Edwin Muir Essay\r'

'â€Å"Horses”\r\nEdwin Muir\r\nin First Poems, 1925\r\nNotes Compiled and Edited by RI\r\nFirst Reading\r\n• The sight of horses now, in the present, leads the speaker to consider his lookings towards horses when he was a child: ‘Perhaps some infantile hour has come again’.\r\n• briny focus:\r\n†The various descriptions of horses and the speaker’s\r\nfeelings towards the horses\r\n†An other- mankindliness about them, something magical\r\n†Admiration and business atomic number 18 mixed\r\n†A lite amorous feel about the poetry: e.g. ‘And oh\r\nthe rapture…’\r\nStanza 1\r\n• ‘ big(a)’ gives the video that the horses are moving in a slow, heavy and awkward way\r\nStanza 2\r\n• Pistons in the machines in an antique mill are consumptiond to describe the nominal head of the horses’ hooves as the child ‘watched business organisationful’\r\n• Th e use of im suppuratery drawn from the early industrial age is interesting in what it tells us about the child’s fear\r\nStanza 3\r\n• The word ‘ conquer’ suggests a reference to an even earlier age\r\n• The word ‘ritual’ and the descriptions ‘seraphim of gold’ and ‘ rapt monsters’ hint at something pagan or pre-historic\r\nStanza 4\r\n• The ‘rapture’ conveys a Romantic sense of worshipping these natural creatures: see lines\r\n2â€4\r\nStanza 5\r\n• ‘glowing with somber fire’ links with the ‘magic baron’, which describes the horses he sees in the present day (in the first stanza)\r\nStanza 6\r\n• The positionful pluck of the horses is captured in the eyes gleaming with a ‘ brute(a) apocalyptic light’\r\n• The apparitional fancyry follows on from the ‘struggling snakes’ of stanza 5\r\nStanza 7\r\n• The repe tition of ‘it fades’ suggests loss, straightforwardly the fading of his memory\r\n• ‘Pine’ means to feel a lingering, often nostalgic\r\n propensity\r\nExercises\r\n• To assist a closer indication of the poem as a\r\n totally\r\nStanza 1\r\n• tax 1\r\n†manner up the meaning of ‘lumbering’ and and so\r\nconsider the way it contrasts with the description\r\nin lines 3 †4\r\nStanza 1\r\n• Task 2\r\n†Look closely at the meanings of ‘terrible’, ‘wild’ and ‘strange’\r\n†These are of course address common in everyday usage, but precise mental lexicon definitions of these terminology reasonfulness yield unthought and original humors\r\n†Note that the horses are ‘lumbering’, whilst the plough is ‘steady’\r\nStanza 2\r\n• take for that you have understood the shift in time.\r\n• The rest of the poem deals with the speaker’s recollection of his feelings as a child.\r\n• What touch do you feel is created by the fiction of the ‘pistons’?\r\nStanza 3\r\n• The references in this stanza are to a preindustrial age. • Consider the effectuate of these words:\r\n‘conquering hooves’, ‘ritual’, ‘seraphim of gold’ and ‘mute rhapsodic monsters’.\r\n• You should consult a dictionary whither\r\nappropriate.\r\nStanzas 4 and 5\r\n• What do you make of the aroma in stanza four?\r\n• Explore the words utilize to describe the horses, and to consider what they propound about the speaker’s mental attitude?\r\n• What contrast is signalled by the use of ‘ nevertheless when at dusk…’ at the ascendant of stanza five?\r\n• What do you make of ‘ recondite fire’ here and the ‘magic power’ attributed to the present-day horses in stanza one?\r \nStanza 6\r\n• Analyse the effectiveness of the imagery: the\r\n‘ deplorable apocalyptic light’ of their eyes and the\r\n personification of the wind.\r\nStanza 7\r\n• Before considering the utmost stanza and\r\n stint a judgement about its effectiveness,\r\nyou might read the whole poem (perhaps\r\n working in pairs).\r\n• Having studied closely the antecedent stanzas,\r\nhow do you now feel that the final stanza\r\nshould be spoken?\r\n• How does the tone here differ from the tone\r\nin other parts of the poem?\r\nActivities\r\n• In assure focus on the sounds of the poem, you\r\nmight in pairs or small groups practise indication\r\nthe poem aloud.\r\n• Try to capture a suitable voice for the speaker as\r\nyou read, and vary the tone as appropriate.\r\n• Finally, gloss a copy of the poem, indicating\r\nbriefly the effects created by imagery and sound\r\ndevices\r\n• opt an example of a device used in a\r\nparticu larly hitting or vivid way; excuse what it is\r\nthat makes it striking for you.\r\nThematic links with imbed poems\r\n• Nature: Pied Beauty, Hunting Snake, Pike, The\r\nWoodspurge, Upon Westminster Bridge,\r\nsummertime Farm\r\n• Time: A diametric History, The Cockroach, The\r\nCity Planners, The Planners\r\nSummary\r\n• Past memories\r\n• stupendous reality\r\n• The poet reminiscing one of his childhood\r\nmemories:\r\n†Horses locomote during a rainy day\r\n indicant of Nature\r\n• Expression of the power of reputation\r\n• Language techniques\r\n†Simile\r\n†The â€Å"mechanical” simile\r\n†Oxymoron\r\n†Negative connotations\r\nVocabulary of nature\r\n• Horses\r\n• palm\r\n• Blackening\r\nrain\r\n• Hooves\r\n• Stubble\r\n• Hulks\r\n• Monsters\r\n•\r\n•\r\n•\r\n•\r\n•\r\n•\r\n•\r\n solarise\r\n light-hearted\r\nBos sy sides\r\nFlakes\r\nSnakes\r\n decline\r\nGloam\r\n•\r\n•\r\n•\r\n•\r\n•\r\n•\r\n•\r\n•\r\n•\r\n waken\r\nBodies\r\nMire\r\nEyes\r\nNight\r\n do work\r\nWind\r\nCountry\r\nTree\r\n synecdochic Language\r\n• Similes\r\n†Hooves\r\n• ‘the likes of pistons in an ancient mill’\r\n†Image:\r\n» Their hooves are like machines\r\n» They keep on moving up and down, ploughing the whole\r\nfield\r\n• seek snakes †Snake-like furrows\r\n†Prepares us for the biblical imagery\r\n» ‘cruel apocalyptic light’\r\n• Eyes\r\n†As brilliant and as wide as night\r\nPersonification\r\n• Wind\r\nTheir man the leaping ire of the wind\r\n upraised with rage invisible and blind\r\n• Dusk\r\n• The broad-breasted horses in the light of the\r\nsetting cheer\r\n• The light coming off of their bodies in flakes\r\n• The steaming nostrils\r\n†¢ Their warm, gigantic bodies glowing with\r\n dark fire\r\n• The smouldering heat of their bodies in the cold\r\nmud\r\n• Metaphors\r\n†â€Å"Conquering”\r\n†â€Å" dandy hulks”\r\n• Mechanical\r\n• Industrial age\r\n• compare a horse’s power to that of an engine\r\n†E.g. car engine\r\n†subscriber can visualize and sense the sensible power of the animal\r\n†Powerful image of the horses\r\n†Appreciation of the beauty of the powerful crush of the horses\r\n• Oxymoron\r\n†Horses described as ‘mute rhapsodic monsters on\r\nthe mould’\r\n†Horses being presented as ‘terrible, so wild and\r\nstrange’, to date with ‘magical power’\r\n†Leading the endorser to ponder the poet’s message:\r\n• The idea of nature fading away and animation becoming\r\nmechanical\r\n†Followed by the revealing of his dislike of modernisation\r\n • Negative connotations\r\n†muddied side and despair\r\n• Through shun connotations\r\n†The â€Å"smouldering” bodies of the horses\r\n» Their eyes gleaming with a â€Å"cruel apocalyptic light”\r\n• here(predicate) the poet expresses his emotions towards\r\nthe arrival of evil, or apocalypse and his world\r\nturning dark\r\nThe right words\r\n• First half of the poem\r\n†wrangling like â€Å"seraphim” and â€Å"gold”\r\n• Emphasis on strong armorial bearing and value in nature\r\n• End of the poem\r\n†â€Å" barren field” and â€Å"still-standing tree”\r\n• The poet introduces a dark, drab tone\r\n†As he expresses his actualization\r\n» faded nature\r\n» loss of its presence\r\nConclusion\r\n• Memory\r\n†Struggle\r\n• Light and darkness\r\n• Symbolic\r\n†Expresses aspects of nature\r\n• ferocity\r\n• Innocence\r\n'