The Horses (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Edwin Muir
- First Published: 1956
- Type of Work: Narrative
- Genres: Free verse, Poetry, Narrative poetry
- Subjects: 1950’s, War, Horses, Nuclear warfare or weapons, Animals
The Poem
Edwin Muir’s “The Horses,” a free-verse narrative poem of fifty-three lines, opens to the reader a future that may have seemed all too possible at the time of its composition in the 1950’s. In the opening lines, “Barely a twelvemonth after/ The seven days war that put the world to sleep,” Muir ushers the reader out of the realm of the everyday. Brief wars have occurred in the past, but have such wars put the entire world to sleep? The notion seems outrageous. Yet that sense of outrage in itself helps to color the passages that follow and put them into...
[The entire page is 1500 words long]
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