How does Edwin Muir portray childhood in horses?
How Does Edwin Muir Portray Childhood In Horses?
At face value, Horses is a poem about Edwin Muir and it’s a nostalgic view on the distant memory of how he felt about the horses as a child compared to now. The way Muir describes the horses is in awe-struck tone, but this varies as at times he seems to be quite fearful of the horses as he looks back in a child-like state of mind. One of the major themes of the poem is how as a child he saw the horses as powerful, which isn’t how he views them now he’s grown and matured so towards the end of the poem the tone changes to quite a solemn tone as he comes to realise how much he’s lost now he’s older and he’s left longing for those days again. The rhyme scheme is AABB, and that joined with the repetition puts emphasis on certain words which are essential to the changing tone.
Muir portrays childhood as exciting and powerful as it has the ability to make something as boring as horses working on a field become a lasting memory that he then pines for as he becomes older. In the first stanza he says “those lumbering horses in the steady plough, on the bare field- ”, this is the first description we get on the horses he uses enjambment comparing the ‘lumbering’ horses to a ‘bare field’, and this makes us realise that like the line, the feelings the poet is describing are still on going.
Also, by using words such as ‘bare’ and ‘steady’ the horses seem uniform and bland, which is a direct contrast to how he saw them as a child as he used to watch them ‘fearful, through the blackening rain.’ As a child he was afraid as they were giant and terrifying to him, he describes their hooves as being like ‘pistons’, which makes them seem very detached and almost mechanical, so there’s nothing you can do to stop these powerful forces, but now he’s an adult he can see they are steady and controllable, so the magic and mystery of the horses no longer exists for Muir and that’s something he’s finding hard to comprehend.
Furthermore, I
At face value, Horses is a poem about Edwin Muir and it’s a nostalgic view on the distant memory of how he felt about the horses as a child compared to now. The way Muir describes the horses is in awe-struck tone, but this varies as at times he seems to be quite fearful of the horses as he looks back in a child-like state of mind. One of the major themes of the poem is how as a child he saw the horses as powerful, which isn’t how he views them now he’s grown and matured so towards the end of the poem the tone changes to quite a solemn tone as he comes to realise how much he’s lost now he’s older and he’s left longing for those days again. The rhyme scheme is AABB, and that joined with the repetition puts emphasis on certain words which are essential to the changing tone.
Muir portrays childhood as exciting and powerful as it has the ability to make something as boring as horses working on a field become a lasting memory that he then pines for as he becomes older. In the first stanza he says “those lumbering horses in the steady plough, on the bare field- ”, this is the first description we get on the horses he uses enjambment comparing the ‘lumbering’ horses to a ‘bare field’, and this makes us realise that like the line, the feelings the poet is describing are still on going.
Also, by using words such as ‘bare’ and ‘steady’ the horses seem uniform and bland, which is a direct contrast to how he saw them as a child as he used to watch them ‘fearful, through the blackening rain.’ As a child he was afraid as they were giant and terrifying to him, he describes their hooves as being like ‘pistons’, which makes them seem very detached and almost mechanical, so there’s nothing you can do to stop these powerful forces, but now he’s an adult he can see they are steady and controllable, so the magic and mystery of the horses no longer exists for Muir and that’s something he’s finding hard to comprehend.
Furthermore, I