Radios In Edwin Muir's The Horses
Edwin Muir’s “The Horses” is a poem that is based “on a fantasy at the end times after a war has occurred” (Steen 13). The poem covers a variety of topics; one in particular is the eagerness to live without tractors and radios. This can be seen near the beginning of the poem where it says, “We would not listen, we would not let it bring/ That old bad world that swallowed its children quick/ At one gulp./ We would not have it again./ Sometimes we think of the nation’s lying asleep,/ Curled Blindly in impenetrable sorrow” (lines 18-22). Radios in the poem are casted off for the reason that they do not want to be a part of a world that turns on them. Tractors are treated rather the same way, however during wartime shortages of natural resources
was common as a result of the war effort. So tractors would not be helpful without oil, so where it says “The tractors lie about in our fields; at evening/ they look like dank sea-monsters couched and waiting./ We leave them there and let the rust:/ ‘They’ll moulder away and be like other loam’” (lines 24-26) people leave them, since they are deemed useless. In Muir’s poem the worldly things are cast aside as a result of the aftermath of war.
was common as a result of the war effort. So tractors would not be helpful without oil, so where it says “The tractors lie about in our fields; at evening/ they look like dank sea-monsters couched and waiting./ We leave them there and let the rust:/ ‘They’ll moulder away and be like other loam’” (lines 24-26) people leave them, since they are deemed useless. In Muir’s poem the worldly things are cast aside as a result of the aftermath of war.