Horses: Poetry and Edwin Muir Essay

It is said that one should forget the bypast and live in the present. However, Edwin Muirs Horses is a poem of past memories just now. The interesting part is that it deals with many conflicts and issues which are prevalent stock-still today. It is thus a bridge between the past and present and is expressed in the form of a piece of literature. Muir himself said that in writing about horses in this poem, he was reflecting his childishness view of his fathers plough horses, which must have seemed huge, powerful and mysterious to a son of four or five. Some of his poems, including Horses, have a close equivalent in passages from his autobiography, suggesting that seeing these horses reminded him of plastered events.The poem begins with the poet transcending reality and reminiscing of one of his childhood memories. In this case it is one of when he as a child, watched a team of horses ploughing the stubble back into the field, during a rainy day which got progressively stormier. I n the first two verses, the poet gives the reader a meaningful hint into what the circumstances of his times were. This was most probably, the hardships of a period of war. The few references Muir makes to an army such as in cases where the horses marched and the word conquering further inflect this issue of war.Their hooves like pistons in an ancient millThis line brings up another issue which is plaguing the trine world as we know it. In the same verse he refers to a childish minute in which he also compares the horses hooves to pistons in an ancient mill. This refers to how child labour in factories was existent even then and how these dark memories were etched in his mind. We can suggest these memories to be dark not only by his imagination but by the fearful way he sees these images of the past.Under the great hulks of these creatures he sees is however another truth. The way these symbols of power trod, allows the reader to infer another thought.