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Ben Russo
Mrs. Boyd
MYP English 9
May 7, 2013
Ted Hughes was an English poet who experienced a great deal of tragedy in his life
resulting from the deaths of his first wife and his second lover along with his child. The poem
“The Horses” by Ted Hughes tells the story of horses that are untouched by their surroundings in
the dreary north English weather. “The Horses” by Ted Hughes resembles his struggle to find
strength and happiness through these tragedies that awaited him in his life by using horses as a
symbol of endurance.
Ted Hughes’ life leading up to the tragedies and grief was filled with happiness and he
was eventually able to find happiness towards the end of his life. Hughes was born in northern
England in 1930 and attended Pembroke College where he began to write poetry. During this
time he fell in love with the American poet Sylvia Plath. They then married a couple months
later. In 1957 Ted Hughes published “The Horses.” Five years later in 1962 Ted Hughes fell in
love with Assia Gutmann Wevill and separated from Plath. Before Hughes and Sylvia Plath
could divorce officially, Plath killed herself by asphyxiation from the gas oven in their kitchen
(“The Horses” 109). The literary community portrayed Hughes as the villain and believed that
Hughes was behind Plath’s death (Bose 122). Later, Wevill murdered their four year-old
daughter and then killed herself (“The Horses” 109). In 1970, Ted Hughes married Carol
Orchard and he appeared to have been happy until his death in 1998 (“The Horses” 110). During
the time of the two tragedies Hughes faced an enormous amount of grief and even depression.
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This grief and sadness was accompanied by the blame placed on him from the literary world,
until he eventually found happiness from his third marriage.
Criticism of “The Horses” notes the sensuous appeal and imagery of this free verse poem,
but also the wisdom that Hughes puts forward through the symbolic horses. Critic Sheri Metzger
Karmiol states that “Even the positioning of the horse’s mane invites the reader’s touch”
(Karmiol 118). Karmiol goes on to say that “They do not move; they only endure” and “He
envies their strength, endurance, and ability to patiently wait for whatever is to come” (Karmiol
119). Karmiol recognizes that the horses symbolize finding strength through enduring one’s
environment. Sudip Bose draws on the more literal nature of the poem remarking “as the west
Yorkshire hillsides of his boyhood, an unforgiving landscape of immensity and grandeur - in
order to render a complex inner world” (Bose 122). These critics recognize the imagery of
Hughes’ “The Horses,” but also bring to the surface the deeper meaning of strength, which the
horses symbolize.
“The Horses” by Ted Hughes fills the reader’s mind with imagery, which allows him or
her to understand the symbolism of the horses in the poem. Hughes sets the tone of this free
verse poem by creating a clear image of the setting and the horses through the use of imagery.
The reader can picture the horses’ stone manes and “world cast in frost” (Hughes 4). This
sensuous image enables the reader to capture the message of the poem, that is in order to have
strength one must endure his or her surroundings. The theme of this poem is captured in the
final line “Hearing the horizons endure” (Hughes 37). Ted Hughes’ “The Horses” enables the
reader to better understand the symbolism of the horses by the vivid and sensuous imagery that is
deployed.
The horses that endure the early morning in the countryside foreshadow the strength that
Hughes needed in his later struggle through multiple tragedies. Since the poem was written
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before the tragedies unfolded, the feelings Hughes adds to the poem cannot be related to what he
faced in his later life. The message of the poem is still relevant to Hughes’ life. “They do not
move; they only endure. The narrator watches the horses with what can only be called envy”
(Karmiol 119). This outlines Hughes’ internal struggle during the death of Plath and Wevill, as
well as their daughter. Hughes was quiet during the deaths of Plath, Wevill, and his daughter.
He withstood the attention put on him from the literary community. Although the tragedies had
no effect on the poem due to the chronological order of events, they are still connected in this
way. It is almost ironic how Hughes was unaware of the relation between of the poem to
strength he would need through the events that were yet to come. “The Horses” resemble the
struggle Ted Hughes faced following the death of Plath, Wevill, and his daughter, even though
they are in no way related.
“The Horses” brings across a message of endurance and strength, which was needed by
the author, Ted Hughes to face the tragedies later in his life after the creation of this poem.
Through the death of his wife, Sylvia Plath and his mistress, Assia Wevill, as well as his
daughter, Hughes endured criticism and attention placed on him until he was finally able to find
happiness.
The symbol of the horses in “The Horses” by Ted Hughes resemble his journey to
find strength like the horses through the tragedies that unfolded in the years to come.
Works Cited
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Bose, Sudip. “The Horses.” Poetry for Students. Ed. Sara Constantakis. Vol. 32. Detroit: Gale,
2010. 121-123. Print.
“The Horses.” Poetry for Students. Ed. Sara Constantakis. Vol. 32. Detroit: Gale, 2010. 108-118.
Print.
Karmiol, Sheri Metzger. “The Horses.” Poetry for Students Ed. Sara Constantakis. Vol. 32.
Detroit: Gale, 2010. 118-121. Print
“Ted Hughes, The Horses.” Poems. N.p., n.d. Web. 7 May 2013.
Ted Hughes, “The Horses”
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I climbed through woods in the hour-before-dawn dark.
Evil air, a frost-making stillness,
Not a leaf, not a bird A world cast in frost. I came out above the wood
Where my breath left tortuous statues in the iron light.
But the valleys were draining the darkness
Till the moorline - blackening dregs of the brightening grey Halved the sky ahead. And I saw the horses:
Huge in the dense grey - ten together Megalith-still. They breathed, making no move,
with draped manes and tilted hind-hooves,
Making no sound.
I passed: not one snorted or jerked its head.
Grey silent fragments
Of a grey silent world.
I listened in emptiness on the moor-ridge.
The curlew's tear turned its edge on the silence.
Slowly detail leafed from the darkness. Then the sun
Orange, red, red erupted
Silently, and splitting to its core tore and flung cloud,
Shook the gulf open, showed blue,
And the big planets hanging I turned
Stumbling in the fever of a dream, down towards
The dark woods, from the kindling tops,
And came to the horses.
There, still they stood,
But now steaming and glistening under the flow of light,
Their draped stone manes, their tilted hind-hooves
Stirring under a thaw while all around them
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The frost showed its fires. But still they made no sound.
Not one snorted or stamped,
Their hung heads patient as the horizons,
High over valleys in the red levelling rays In din of crowded streets, going among the years, the faces,
May I still meet my memory in so lonely a place
Between the streams and the red clouds, hearing the curlews,
Hearing the horizons endure.