“There Will Come Soft Rains”
(Teasdale – 1920)
“The Horses”
(Edwin Muir – 1956)
Sara Teasdale (1884-1933)
• Alive during turn of twentieth century
• Experienced many romances as a young woman;
married at age 30 (eventually divorced)
• Idealized view of love/relationships didn’t align
with her reality
• Sorrow turned into poetry
• Eventually overdosed
I might as well
face it: I’m
addicted to love.
http://www.jimandellen.org/feministblog/591.html
What should have been a red flag…
THE KISS
I hoped that he would love me,
And he has kissed my mouth,
But I am like a stricken bird
That cannot reach the south.
For though I know he loves me,
To-night my heart is sad;
His kiss was not so wonderful
As all the dreams I had.
• Title shares name
with Ray
Bradbury’s short
story.
• Bradbury’s piece
imagines a
suburban home in
the aftermath of
nuclear
annihilation, an
adaptation of
Teasdale’s subject:
the arrival of
spring after
humans have gone
extinct.
http://www.mania.com/gallery/30416/25801.jpg
The Poem
There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools, singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white,
Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.
Couplet x6
Seems like a familiar
nursery rhyme (regular
meter & rhyme soft
alliteration, gentle
imagery) but it’s actually
post-apocalyptic
•Mankind’s extinction
•Spring renewal
•Nature’s indifference to
humankind
•Predictable meter
•Synesthesia
•Sudden shift in mood
halfway through
Literary Elements
• Synesthesia: description of one form or sense
perception by reference to another (also a
cognitive association pattern)
– “swallows circling with their shimmering sound”
• Metaphor/personification
– “Spring herself, when she woke at dawn” – spring
is anthropomorphized
• Anthropomorphism
– “Robins will wear their feathery fire”
Literary Elements
• Caesura: pause in the middle of a line of
poetry
– Create “pivot points”
– Reflect thematic conflict within poem or speaker
– Marked here by commas (strong) or just a hint of
a pause (weaker as in first two lines)
There is no
Assess Yourself
1. Which of the following words marks a noticeable shift in “There Will Come
Soft Rains”?
a. war
b. perished
c. fire
d. night
e. low
2. Teasdale’s “There Will Come Soft Rains” suggests that the eradication of
humanity would
a. take many years
b. never happen
c. go unnoticed by nature
d. result in the world’s destruction
e. be a tragedy
Edwin Muir (1887-1959)
• No relation to John Muir, but he is Scottish
• Born to tenant farmers who later moved to
slums in search of better life when they lost
their land (“fall from Eden”)
• By the age of 14, he was an orphan on his
own in the booming metropolis of Glasgow
• Self-educated
• Married Willa, also a teacher/linguist
“The Horses” Background
• Influenced by his being
uprooted from the countryside
• From larger work, One Foot in
Eden
• Subtly questions some of our
deepest assumptions about
progress
• Pastoral – a way of life based on
herding animals; idealization of
a rural way of life
•Nuclear
apocalypse
•Peaceful postindustrial future
•Reunion between
humankind &
animals
•Free verse
•Elegiac (mournful)
•Understated tone
Literary Devices
• Antithesis to Wordsworth’s “Steamboats,
Viaducts, and Railways”
• Archaic diction emphasizes apocalyptic style
at beginning
• Biblical allusions
• Figurative horses – what do they stand for?
What’s the big idea?
• Dream of a more authentic connection with
animals (as evidenced by the horses)
• We are part of a larger community of living
beings and cannot survive alone.
• The end of urban-industrial modernity allows
for the birth of a new world order that
harkens back to a greener world.
– “Our life is changed; their coming our beginning”
Assess Yourself
1. What time of day is it when the horses arrive in Edwin Muir’s “The
Horses”?
a. early evening
b. midday
c. early morning
d. late evening
e. mid-afternoon
2. The conclusion of Edwin Muir’s “The Horses” could BEST be
described as
a. optimistic
b. inconclusive
c. hectic
d. disheartening
e. morbid