The Horses - Edwin Muir [1887-1959]
Relevant Background:
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Edwin Muir was born on the remote Orkney Islands to the
north of Scotland in 1887.
His father was a tenant farmer but he lost his land when
Muir was fourteen.
Muir then moved with his family to Glasgow in 1901, where
he remained for 18 years. The family lived in a poor part
of the city.
During the early 1920s Muir travelled in Europe.
Muir wrote poetry and plays and earned his living as an
editor, translator and literary critic.
He poetry is personal and often dreamlike.
The poem ‘The Horses’ describes a future way of life that
will be like the simple farming life of the past.
This way of life will be like how it used to be in the
Garden of Eden. There will be no industry or technology.
Man will once again be close to nature and animals.
The roots of this poem lie in Muir’s experience of life.
His life as a boy on a remote island was sheltered compared
to the disorder and uproar of life in Glasgow.
In Glasgow first his father, then his two brothers, and
then his mother died in the space of a few years.
His life as a young man in Glasgow was a depressing
experience for him, involving a succession of unpleasant
jobs.
Thus he began to imagine and long for a more innocent way
of life, close to the earth like in his childhood.
The horror of twentieth century world wars also influenced
the poem.
Like many writers of the twentieth century Muir thought a
future war might wipe out the world as we know it.
The central idea in the poem is that people ought to live a
life of hard work close to the earth.
The ideas in the poem are somewhat like the strict ideas of
Calvin. Calvinism is a religion that proposes a life of
strict innocence based on hard work, closeness to the soil
and avoidance of pleasure.
Calvin’s ideas were central to the Presbytarian religion
that Muir grew up in.
In this religion only a small portion of people would get
in to heaven after God angrily destroys the world.
Muir seems to think the good people are those who live
close to the earth.
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Muir creates a speaker or narrator from the future who
describes recent history. The descriptions of events at sea
suggest he is on an island, similar to where Muir grew up.
The poem is futuristic. The speaker is like a survivor
describing the new, recovered earth after a Third World
War.
It is a dream-like poem that contains farming imagery
straight from the poet’s childhood on the farm in the
Orkney Islands.
The poem refers to mysterious horses that come to help
humans rebuild their life.
These horses represent a new world.
At the end of the bible, in the Book of Revelations, four
horses were a signal for the end of the world.
In this poem, Muir imagines one world has ended and a new
one has begun.
The horses that ended the world in the bible, return to
help build the new world, a world close to nature.
Summary:
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The speaker or narrator refers to a seven-day war and to
the arrival of the magical horses. They are like horses
from mythology.
The speaker says the community had decided to remain silent
about the past and move on.
He describes the first few days of the war when they lived
in shock and fear. They were afraid of the sound of their
own breathing.
The speaker mentions a few details of the war.
Their radios stopped working on the second day.
A warship full of dead bodies passed northwards on the
third day.
On the sixth day an airplane fell into the sea.
After the war radios everywhere remained silent
Soon it became clear people never again wanted to hear the
radios.
If the radios ever start to broadcast again people will
ignore them because they represent the bad old days of war
that killed children instantly.
The survivors do not want to go back to a world where
entire nations were wiped out in one stroke.
The memory of that sad fact astounds them.
They ignore their disused tractors. In the light of dusk
the tractors look like damp sea-monsters.
The community of survivors have decided to let the tractors
rot into the clay.
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Immediately after the war, they began to farm using oxen or
cattle to pull the ploughs. This is the old way of farming
described in the bible.
The speaker then describes the magical and mysterious
arrival of the horses one evening.
At first they made a frightening noise like drums or
thunder as they approached.
The speaker remembers the dramatic moment he saw the heads
of the approaching horses.
He recalls how they had got rid of horses and replaced them
with tractors in the old world.
The arrival of the horses was like the arrival of magical
steeds from a story about knights.
At first the people were afraid of the horses.
But the horses waited, determined and shy.
People began to realise the horses had been sent to them.
The horses had been sent by God’s command to find them.
It appears the horses had a mission to restore the
relationship of man and horse from ancient times.
At first the people had no thought of using the horses for
their work.
The group of horses contained six young horses that looked
as if they had come from the Garden of Eden.
They were mysteriously dropped into the broken world to
help the survivors rebuild the new world.
Since that moment the horses have helped the community of
survivors with the heavy farm work.
The speaker says the people are touched by the free choice
of the horses to serve them at work.
Life has changed. The arrival of the horses marked the
beginning of the new world.
Themes:
The Return To A Simple And Innocent Way Of Life
Muir imagines that the real world is so evil that it will
destroy itself. Mass media control the world we live in. Radio
represents this fact. Our world has turned from nature to
machinery. Tractors represent this. The speaker sees tractors as
monsters from the sea. He imagines a world war that will get rid
of this way of life. Such a war will wipe out entire nations.
Then he dreams about the survivors returning to nature and
innocence: ‘We have gone back far past our father’s land’. He
suggests the survivors would never again allow inventions to
take over their lives. Horses will take over from tractors. He
suggests humans have an ancient natural bond with horses: ‘that
long-lost archaic companionship’. A new beginning will establish
a world like it used to be in the bible. The horses are said to
be straight out of their own Eden. A happy rural society will
form. It will be dedicated to work. He doesn’t speak of pleasure
but of simple farm work. He suggests that humans will be happy
only when working close to the earth.
War:
The poem paints a frightening picture of war. Fear dominates
people’s emotions. Radios go quiet. Radios were the only type of
mass media in the middle of the twentieth century. But the idea
of a million homes with radios standing silent creates a
horrible feeling of emptiness in the homes. We presume the
people are silenced too, by death. A warship passes with dead
bodies. A plane crashes into the sea. The suggestion that war
swallowed children ‘quick’ or alive shows the frightening
savagery of war. The poet describes whole nations massacred by
war. It is like a nuclear war. The people lie dead, locked in
sorrow at how they died. The poet suggests that the existence of
machines and fast progress caused this war. He thinks that by
replacing horses with tractors people lost touch with nature and
evil gradually took over.
Style:
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Repetition Muir uses a series of words to show the alarming
noise the approaching horses made: ‘tapping’, ‘drumming’
and ‘thunder’. Notice how the words build up to a climax.
Imagery Muir uses a gruesome image of war: ‘dead bodies
piled on deck’. He uses primitive images such as oxen
pulling ploughs.
Symbol The tractors are symbols of industry and technology
which destroyed the previous world.
Metaphor The old world is compared to an monster that ‘that
swallowed its children quick at one great gulp’.
Personification By using the word ‘dumb’ Muir personifies
the radios. He also personifies them by saying that they
stand. This portrays the radios as evil beings waiting to
resume control over people’s lives.
Simile Muir compares the disused tractors to ‘dank seamonsters’. He compares the horses to the mythical horses of
knight’s tales: ‘fabulous steeds set on an ancient shield’.
The arriving horses are said to be like a ‘wild wave’.
Language The poet uses language in striking ways. Muir uses
English as it used to be used in the past to create an
ancient atmosphere in the future! He uses the word
‘twelvemonth’ for year and he uses the bible word
‘covenant’ for promise. The word ‘servitude’ is also bible
language. The language at times is factual. Here the
punctuation breaks up the line into three parts, into three
facts: ‘The radios failed; we turned the knobs, no answer.’
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Euphemism [Using mild words to name something severe] To
say that millions were slaughtered he uses a mild
expression that the world was put to sleep.
Metonymy Muir uses the word voice to represent the ruler or
rulers who used radio to control countries or the world.
Since they used to control people through what radio, Muir
uses the word ‘voice’ to represent the person who
controlled. It reminds us of the famous broadcast by
Chamberlain in 1939 when he told the country that England
was at war with Germany.
Contrast The poet contrasts the age of machines with the
simple way of life that is close to nature. He contrasts
the future with the present.
Tone The tone is a combination of the following: coldness
[‘war that put the world to sleep’], fear [‘were afraid’],
desolate [‘no answer’], horror [‘dead bodies piled’],
defiance [‘We would not listen’], sad [‘nations lying
asleep], sinister [‘sea-monsters], mystery [‘we heard a
distant tapping’], guilt [‘ we had sold our horses’],
excitement [‘as fabulous steeds’], relief and happiness
[‘Our life is changed’].
Atmosphere The poet uses the silence in the opening of the
poem to create an atmosphere of fear. The indirect way of
describing death on a large scale as ‘sleep’ creates an
uneasy atmosphere. The image of whole nations lying dead,
curled in expressions of secret sorrow is scary. The sudden
coming of the horses creates a mysterious atmosphere.
Paradox [apparent contradiction] ‘free servitude’
Allusion The poet refers to the Bible a lot. He mentions
the seven-day war, which echoed the seven days God took to
create the world. He refers to mythical horses which echo
the horses of the Book of Revelations in the Bible. Muir
also portrays the new, simple way of life close to the
earth as Paradise. It sounds a bit like the simple way of
life in the Garden of Eden in the bible. The poem suggests
that the innocence of Adam and Eve have been restored.
Alliteration The repeated ‘f’ in ‘far past our father’s
land’ is musical and places emphasis on how far the way of
life has returned to the past. Another example is
‘deepening drumming’. ‘D’ gets across the fear factor.
Assonance The frequent use of ‘o’ sounds between lines
fifteen and twenty is musical. The ‘o’ in particular gives
us an impression of the missing voice of the old leaders
e.g. ‘If on the stroke of noon a voice should speak’.
Consonance [repetition of consonant sound anywhere in
words] Note how the use of ‘d’ five times here creates a
grim atmosphere and emphasises death: ‘dead bodies piled on
deck’. The use of ‘d’ to create the increasing noise and
tension before the horses appear is very effective.
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Sibilance [repetition of ‘s’ sound] The ‘s’ in ‘Stubborn
and shy’ emphasises the quietness of the horses.
Rhyme There is no overall rhyming pattern. But a number of
lines rhyme in a random way. The poet achieves some rhyming
within lines e.g. ‘stands’ in lines thirteen and fourteen.
Similarly the word ‘speak’ is used in lines fifteen,
sixteen and seventeen.
Form The poem follows a loose structure of verse
paragraphs. It is a narrative poem that uses an imaginary
story of the future to teach a moral lesson about the
corruption of the world. In that sense the poem is a
futuristic fable.