Full Moon and Little Frieda Summary & Analysis
by Ted Hughes

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  • “Full Moon and Little Frieda” Introduction

    • In "Full Moon and Little Frieda," English poet Ted Hughes remembers an evening he spent with his daughter Frieda when she was a small child. The two go out into the garden on an ordinary night that becomes extraordinary when Frieda excitedly remarks upon the full moon—a presence that, in the poem, seems to look right back at Frieda with equal astonishment. This poem first appeared in Hughes's 1967 collection Wodwo. Written in free verse and filled with striking imagery, the poem speaks to the beauty of nature, the wonder of childhood, and the surreal magic of being a parent.

  • “Full Moon and Little Frieda” Summary

    • The speaker describes a cool, quiet, ordinary night when all that's going on outside is a dog barking and a bucket clanking—and his little daughter listening intently. She makes him think of a spider web hanging in suspense, waiting for the dew to touch it—or of a full pail lifted up to catch the trembling reflection of a star.

      In the road, cows are heading back home from the fields, leaving misty trails of their breath hanging over the hedges. The road looks like a river of blood full of boulders with brimming milk pails balanced on them. The speaker's daughter suddenly shouts: "Moon! Moon! Moon!"

      Above them, the moon seems to have stepped back, as if it's an artist looking in astonishment at an artwork that's pointing back at him, just as astonished.

  • “Full Moon and Little Frieda” Themes

    • Theme Childhood Wonder and the Beauty of Nature

      Childhood Wonder and the Beauty of Nature

      “Full Moon and Little Frieda” describes a child's wonder-struck response to the natural world. The autobiographical poem tells the story of an evening the poet Ted Hughes spent with his daughter Frieda when she was a small child, no more than a toddler. At first, this seems like an ordinary dusk in the English countryside: a “cool small evening” when a “dog bark and the clank of a bucket” are the only sounds that father and daughter can hear as they stand outside their house.

      But Frieda is fully alert. “Tense” as a “spider’s web” and poised as a “pail lifted, still and brimming,” she’s listening so hard to the night that she quivers. Frieda, these trembly images suggest, is still sensitive to the natural world, responsive even to the ordinary sights and sounds that an adult might take for granted. The fact that the metaphors Hughes uses to describe Frieda—a dewy spiderweb, a full bucket—could easily be taken from real objects in the garden around her underscores that point: Frieda is a perfect “mirror” to the world, absorbing everything, missing nothing.

      Frieda’s sensitivity becomes particularly clear when the “full moon” of the poem’s title comes out. The little girl greets its appearance with a cry of awe—“‘Moon! Moon!’”—and “points at [the moon] amazed.” Such simple, complete astonishment at an everyday natural phenomenon, the poem suggests, is one of the privileges of childhood, a kind of inborn wisdom that children can offer to adults. Not yet used to what’s around her, little Frieda can respond to the beauty of nature with full-body awe and delight—a reaction that is in itself an awe-inspiring delight to her father. Such childlike responsiveness reveals a loveliness in nature that is always there, but seldom really seen. In this way, the poem celebrates not just the awesomeness of the natural world but also of childhood innocence and wonder.

      Where this theme appears in the poem:
      • Lines 1-11
    • Theme The Magic of Parenthood

      The Magic of Parenthood

      In addition to illustrating a child's awe and the beauty of nature, “Full Moon and Little Frieda” is a reflection on the surreal magic of parenthood. The poem records Ted Hughes’s joy and wonder at his small daughter’s very existence. Standing outside his house in the English countryside, Hughes watches as Frieda (who was only a toddler at the time the poem's events took place) marvels at the sounds and sights of the evening. Her alertness makes Hughes feel more aware of what’s going on around him, too—and encourages him to reflect on Frieda’s relatively recent arrival to the world.

      When Hughes sees a procession of “cows […] going home in the lane,” for instance, he envisions them as “boulders” in a “river of blood,” “balancing unspilled milk” on their backs. These metaphors of milk and blood might call up childbirth and babyhood: Frieda, still a very small child, came into the world on a “river of blood” pretty recently, and the milk imagery suggests nursing. In these mysterious lines, the idea of having children comes to feel like a magical thing in itself, strangely connected to the rhythms and movements of the natural world.

      Hughes’s wonder at Frieda’s very being takes center stage at the end of the poem, when the little girl points in wonder at the moon. The moon, Hughes concludes, “has stepped back like an artist gazing amazed at a work / That points at him amazed.” Here, the “artist” moon becomes an image of Hughes himself: one of the astonished creators of this little child, “amazed” at her amazement and amazed that she is here at all. Having a child, the poem suggests, can feel like an utter miracle: Frieda’s arrival, growth, and way of looking at the world all inspire awe in her loving parent. As the moon is to Frieda, so Frieda is to Hughes.

      Where this theme appears in the poem:
      • Lines 1-11
  • Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Full Moon and Little Frieda”

    • Lines 1-2

      A cool small ...
      ... And you listening.

      “Full Moon and Little Frieda” begins on what the speaker calls a “cool small evening” in the English countryside. The night has “shrunk to a dog bark and the clank of a bucket”—a metaphor that suggests the dark is falling. It’s easier now to hear these sounds than it is to see their sources. But the metaphorical smallness of this evening also hints that the evening feels perfectly ordinary; this not a grand occasion, just another little night among many. Soon, though, this night will swell into something strange and wonderful. This will be a poem about a rediscovery of loveliness, in which a night that feels as if it has “shrunk” opens up into something greater.

      That transformation will come through the “listening” ears and watching eyes of “Little Frieda,” the person to whom this poem is addressed. This is an autobiographical poem: Frieda Hughes is Ted Hughes’s daughter, and the speaker is Hughes himself, describing an evening when his child was very small—perhaps no more than a toddler. Hughes tells the story in the present tense, bringing readers into the immediacy of his memory.

      On this cool small evening, Hughes observes, Frieda is “listening.” A mere dog bark and bucket clank are enough to perk up her ears; to a person who’s little and new to the world, the evening must feel rather less “small” than it does to her father. Readers might imagine the father holding the daughter on his hip and watching as she listens intently to the night.

      The shape of this poem helps to capture Frieda’s alertness and fascination. Listen to the way these first two lines move:

      A cool small evening shrunk to a dog bark and the clank of a bucket—
      And you listening.

      The long first line feels easy and matter-of-fact: the speaker simply describes what’s there to be heard in the night. The strikingly short second line thus feels concentrated, in more senses than one. Frieda’s listening, conveyed in a mere three words, takes up a full line of its own, reflecting how fully absorbed Frieda is in what she can hear. The three-word line coming after the much longer line evokes an intense quiet, as if Frieda’s listening creates a hush around her. And the simple power of those three words suggests that Hughes is as absorbed in Frieda as Frieda is in her surroundings.

      The shape of these lines also matches the world the speaker has described. Like the night, the poem shrinks here, condensing down around Frieda as if she’s at the very center of the world.

      All across this short poem, Hughes’s flexible free verse (poetry written without a regular rhyme scheme or a meter) will similarly shapeshift, changing its form and rhythms to capture the atmosphere of this cool small evening.

    • Lines 3-5

      A spider's web, ...
      ... to a tremor.

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    • Lines 6-9

      Cows are going ...
      ... cry suddenly, "Moon! Moon!"

    • Lines 10-11

      The moon has ...
      ... at him amazed.

  • “Full Moon and Little Frieda” Symbols

    • Symbol The Moon

      The Moon

      When Frieda gazes in awe at the moon, the moon seems to gaze at Frieda in return, reflecting her awe right back at her. In its particular qualities—it's an artist and a "him"—this moon is a symbol of Ted Hughes himself, looking in wonder at his little daughter. As he describes the moon looking at Frieda "like an artist gazing amazed" at an artwork that has come to life, Hughes also describes his own astonishment at this little child that he's fathered. Frieda's intense fascination with the world is a wondrous thing—and so is Frieda herself, this person so recently arrived in the world and so alert to all its beauties.

      By putting himself in the moon's shoes, Hughes might also suggest that he's gotten caught up in Frieda's way of seeing things, feeling himself to be a part of this night just as she does. Frieda's wonder helps to bridge the gap between Hughes and the moon, allowing him to inhabit what he might otherwise barely have noticed.

      Where this symbol appears in the poem:
      • Lines 9-11: “"Moon!" you cry suddenly, "Moon! Moon!" / The moon has stepped back like an artist gazing amazed at a work / That points at him amazed.”
  • “Full Moon and Little Frieda” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

    • Metaphor

      The vivid imagery of the first stanza can also be interpreted as a series of metaphors that Hughes is using to describe his daughter Frieda listening intently to the night. As she tunes her ears to her surroundings, she becomes:

      A spider's web, tense for the dew's touch.
      A pail lifted, still and brimming—mirror
      To tempt a first star to a tremor.

      There’s a tension between stillness and trembling in these images that captures Frieda’s sheer sensitivity to her surroundings. As a spider’s web, she’s “tense”; as a lifted pail, she’s “still.” But there’s also a “tremor” in these images, a faint trembling. Readers can imagine Hughes holding Frieda on his hip, feeling her at once perfectly still and quivering with tense alertness.

      Both of these metaphors also suggest that Frieda is trying to capture something. The vision of the spider’s web waiting for the dew invites readers to picture a spiderweb hung with jewel-like drops, suggesting that Frieda is waiting receptively for something beautiful to arrive. But this metaphor also can’t help but raise the prospect of fly-catching—an idea that suggests Frieda might be hungry for what she hears and sees.

      Meanwhile, the image of Frieda as a full and brimming pail stacks a metaphor on a metaphor. This imagined pail becomes a “mirror” trying to “tempt a first star to a tremor”—in other words, to capture a star’s reflection on its quivering surface. Frieda, then, is trying to take the world in, to make it a part of her. (The personification of the “tense” spider’s web and the “tempt[ing]” mirror strengthen that sense of hunger and fascination.)

      This pair of metaphors further suggests that Frieda is already absorbing the world like a little sponge. A real-life spider’s web collecting dew and a brimming bucket might easily appear in the garden where Hughes and Frieda stand together. These metaphors show how deeply connected Frieda is to the scene around her.

      The metaphors of the second stanza, meanwhile, tell readers something about Hughes’s imaginative experience of the night:

      Cows are going home in the lane there, looping the hedges with their warm wreaths of breath
      A dark river of blood, many boulders,
      Balancing unspilled milk
      .

      In this moment, the gentle countryside sight of cows going home for the night becomes a grand, dark vision somewhere between a pagan sacrifice and a biblical plague. The cattle seem almost to be decorating the hedgerows for a ritual with their “warm wreaths of breath.” The conjunction of cows on parade and wreaths might even bring up echoes of Keats’s famous "Ode on a Grecian Urn," in which a “heifer” adorned in flowery “garlands” “low[s] at the skies” on the way to the altar: there’s a hint of ceremonious sacrifice here.

      That hint gets stronger when Hughes describes the lane down which the cows walk as a “dark river of blood” full of “many boulders.” The cows here seem to be sunk in gore. But this startling image also introduces a mood of earthy fertility. The boulder-like cows, Hughes imagines, are “balancing unspilled milk”—and the milk and blood together might make readers think of birth as much as death. Blood and milk, after all, are what nourish a baby, first in the womb and then in the world. Here, Hughes might be seeing the astonishing fact of little Frieda’s not-so-long-ago birth reflected in the world around him.

      Where metaphor appears in the poem:
      • Line 3: “A spider's web, tense for the dew's touch.”
      • Lines 4-5: “A pail lifted, still and brimming—mirror / To tempt a first star to a tremor.”
      • Line 6: “their warm wreaths of breath—”
      • Lines 7-8: “A dark river of blood, many boulders, / Balancing unspilled milk.”
    • Simile

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      Where simile appears in the poem:
      • Lines 10-11: “The moon has stepped back like an artist gazing amazed at a work / That points at him amazed.”
    • Imagery

      Where imagery appears in the poem:
      • Line 1
      • Lines 3-5
      • Line 6
      • Line 10
    • Anaphora

      Where anaphora appears in the poem:
      • Line 1: “A cool small evening”
      • Line 3: “A spider's web”
      • Line 4: “A pail lifted”
      • Line 7: “A dark river of blood”
    • Diacope

      Where diacope appears in the poem:
      • Line 9: “Moon!,” “Moon! Moon!”
      • Line 10: “amazed”
      • Line 11: “amazed”
    • Alliteration

      Where alliteration appears in the poem:
      • Line 1: “bark,” “bucket”
      • Line 3: “tense,” “touch”
      • Line 5: “To tempt,” “to,” “tremor”
      • Line 6: “lane,” “looping,” “breath”
      • Line 7: “blood,” “boulders”
      • Line 8: “Balancing”
  • “Full Moon and Little Frieda” Vocabulary

    Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

    • Clank
    • Brimming
    • Tremor
    • Hedges
    Clank
    • (Location in poem: Line 1: “the clank of a bucket”)

      A sharp, jarring sound—perhaps of the metal "pail" described later in the stanza.

  • Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Full Moon and Little Frieda”

    • Form

      “Full Moon and Little Frieda” is a free verse poem, meaning it doesn’t use a regular meter or rhyme scheme. Within this flexible form, Hughes creates patterns of his own.

      The poem’s eleven lines are divided into four irregular stanzas: one of five lines, one of four, and two of just one. The poem, like little Frieda herself, thus feels like it's concentrating, both in the sense of "focusing its attention" and the sense of "cooking down into something more intense." In the first stanza, Frieda seems to be waiting for something, watching the night with attention like a "spider's web" waiting to be coated with dew. By the final stanza, she has seen the moon, and she's fully focused on its beauty, "point[ing]" in amazement at this miraculous sight.

      The poem's shape also captures Hughes's own moment of wonder. This poem tells a true story from his daughter's childhood. In the two closing one-line stanzas— "The moon has stepped back like an artist gazing amazed at a work // That points at him amazed"—Hughes reflects his own loving parental wonder at Frieda's wonder (and at Frieda herself). His choice to tell this story in the present tense makes this fond memory feel immediate and alive. The enjambment of these two final stanzas also grants this final image space to linger and breathe.

    • Meter

      Written in free verse, “Full Moon and Little Frieda” doesn’t use a meter. The poem instead creates rhythm through changing line lengths. The first stanza, for instance, begins with a long line that gives a relatively simple description of what the speaker can hear in the dark: “A cool small evening shrunk to a dog bark and the clank of a bucket.” Line 2, like that cool small evening, shrinks down, using a mere three words: "And you listening."

      The rest of the stanza (lines 3-5) feels similarly short and taut: no line is longer than eight words long. Coming after the sprawling first line, these shorter lines convey a sense of suspense and quiet that matches Frieda’s wide-eared alertness to the night.

      In the closing lines of the poem, meanwhile, Hughes introduces two stanzas of only one line apiece:

      The moon has stepped back like an artist gazing amazed at a work

      That points at him amazed.

      Again, there's that focusing movement from a long line to a short line. But here, the lines each have a stanza to themselves, so they're surrounded by airy space: a choice that mirrors the way Frieda's amazement at the moon makes the "shrunk[en]" night feel big, wide, and full of wonders to Frieda's equally amazed father.

    • Rhyme Scheme

      There’s no rhyme scheme in “Full Moon and Little Frieda.” Instead, the poem makes music through alliteration, assonance, and consonance. In lines 4-5, for instance, the sound of the language helps to create a softly suspenseful atmosphere:

      A pail lifted, still and brimming—mirror
      To tempt a first star to a tremor.

      The short hushed vowel sounds of “lifted,” “still,” and “brimming” (and, depending on one's accent, "mirror") make line four feel still and level—just like the water in that imagined pail. In line 5, meanwhile, the delicate /t/ alliteration and consonance of “To tempt a first star to a tremor” suggests the quiet tip-tap of water moving as a bucket trembles. In line 10, meanwhile, the long /az/ sounds of “gazing amazed” draw out the phrase, making it feel as airy and wide-open as the space between Frieda and the moon.

  • “Full Moon and Little Frieda” Speaker

    • The speaker of "Full Moon and Little Frieda" is Ted Hughes himself. The poem captures his memory of an evening he spent with his daughter Frieda when she was a small child. (The now-grown Frieda Hughes has remarked that this poem is her favorite of her father's works.)

      Hughes published this poem in 1967, when Frieda was seven years old, but he wrote it several years before that, when she was only a toddler. The Hughes of the poem, then, is a young father sharing in his small child's excitement at the world. Frieda's fascination with the moon reinvigorates Hughes's own sense of wonder. Hughes and Frieda have just stepped out into their back garden on an ordinary night. But seen through Frieda's eyes, this everyday "cool small evening," its quiet broken only by the homey sounds of "a dog bark and the clank of a bucket," becomes magical.

      At the end of the poem, when Hughes imagines the moon "gazing amazed" at Frieda like an "artist" whose work has come to life, he gives readers a picture of himself, too. As Frieda's dad, he's one of the astonished, happy creators of an astonishing little person; as a poet, he's also the "artist" breathing life into this whole wonderstruck scene.

  • “Full Moon and Little Frieda” Setting

    • “Full Moon and Little Frieda” is set in the English countryside at dusk—more specifically, in Devon, where Hughes and his family lived in the early 1960s. As cows make their way home through a nearby lane in the “hedges,” Hughes and his small daughter, Frieda, stand listening. It’s getting dark out; Hughes feels as if the evening has “shrunk,” suggesting that the low light and the quiet (broken only by “a dog bark and the clank of a bucket”) make the world feel small and close.

      Nonetheless, there’s room for mystery in this little world. There’s a hushed suspense in the air: Frieda, looking around her, quivers like a “spider’s web” or a “still and brimming” pail, trembling with interest and anticipation. When the moon comes out, the tension breaks into delight: “'Moon! Moon!'” she cries in a moment of innocent wonder. In Hughes's eyes, the moon seems to wonder right back at her, looking like an “artist gazing amazed at a work / That points at him amazed.

      The world of this poem, then, is a secretly enchanted one. Frieda’s delight in the moon transforms a normal evening in the backyard into something magical, or perhaps reveals that something magical might always be present in the natural world. Her excitement invites Hughes to see that moon as alive and responsive, just as amazed at Frieda as Frieda is amazed at it.

  • Literary and Historical Context of “Full Moon and Little Frieda”

      Literary Context

      The English poet Ted Hughes (1930-1998) is considered one of the foremost writers of the 20th century. Hughes's arrival on the scene with his 1957 debut The Hawk in the Rain was a shock to the system for British poetry; the book's raw imagery challenged the more restrained and formal style of writers like Philip Larkin.

      "Full Moon and Little Frieda" was first published in Hughes's 1967 collection Wodwo. That title (which alludes to a folkloric British forest spirit) reflects a characteristically Hughesian intimacy with nature. Hughes grew up in the West Riding of Yorkshire, a rural part of England, and he cultivated an early interest in the natural world. This poem is one of many he wrote that captures an intense encounter with the landscape. Hughes was both reverent and unsentimental about the natural world, seeing it not just as a source of wisdom and beauty (as the 19th-century Romantics like William Wordsworth often did) but also as a place full of instinctive violence and danger.

      Hughes was deeply influenced by the work of his wife, fellow poet Sylvia Plath. (This autobiographical poem describes a moment Hughes shared with their daughter Frieda; readers might also be interested in Plath's poem about Frieda, "Morning Song.") Throughout their often tormented marriage, the couple produced a rich, unsettling body of work. To this day, Hughes and Plath remain two of the most widely read poets in the English language.

      Historical Context

      Over the course of his long and prolific career (which ran from the 1950s until his death in 1998), Hughes saw wild social change. He began publishing his poetry during a period of rapid post-war urbanization and industrialization, when Britain's booming manufacturing industry built products as diverse as ships, cars, metals, and textiles. But with this boom came increasing pollution. Hughes's poetry, with its interest in wild nature and animal instinct, might be read as a skeptical rejoinder to a post-war enthusiasm for unquestioned mechanization and expansion.

      But "Full Moon and Little Frieda," like a lot of Hughes's poetry, steps outside its specific historical context. Though it's possible to guess the rough date of Frieda's awestruck encounter with the moon—it must have taken place in the early 1960s, when Frieda was not much more than a baby—the story could have happened in any era. The wonder this poem describes feels timeless.

      Perhaps more relevant here, then, is Hughes's personal history. Hughes published this poem in 1967, when Frieda was seven years old—four years after a family tragedy. Sylvia Plath, Hughes's wife and Frieda's mother, struggled with severe depression for much of her life, and in 1963 (when Frieda was just three and the couple's son Nicholas was one) she died by suicide. Some readers take this poem's image of the "dark river of blood" in line 7 as a veiled allusion to Plath's death.

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