"The Horses," by British poet Ted Hughes, describes the stillness and serenity of the natural world at dawn. The poem's speaker, likely representing Hughes himself, describes walking through the woods on a quiet, chilly morning. The speaker comes across a group of sleeping horses who are as still and silent as the surrounding landscape, appearing like magnificent gray statues in the darkness. When the sun rises and burns away the morning mists, the horses remain motionless, as though in no rush to heed this wake-up call. The speaker is moved by their patience and hopes to remember the peace and beauty of this isolated landscape upon returning to the noisy chaos of city life. Hughes published "The Horses" in his first collection, The Hawk in the Rain, in 1957.
The speaker walked up a tree-covered hill in the darkness just before sunrise. The atmosphere was ominous and filled with an icy stillness.
There wasn't a single leaf or bird around, and it was as though the speaker's surroundings had been frozen solid. When the speaker emerged from the trees, their breath made twisted clouds of fog in the cold air and the low, gray light.
The valleys below were filled with darkness until they reached the edge of the boggy landscape and the horizon: a dark line marked by the final remnants of the night, which split the sky before the speaker in half.
And that's when the speaker saw horses. There were ten of them, looking enormous in the thick gray light and standing as still as giant rock statues. They remained completely motionless and silent as they breathed, their long manes of hair flowing down their necks and their back hooves resting at an angle.
Not a single horse responded when the speaker walked by. They were silent, gray pieces of a silent, gray planet.
The speaker listened for any sound in the silence on the outlook overlooking the expanse of boggy land below. The call of a bird suddenly interrupted the absolute quiet.
The speaker was able to make out more specific images in their surroundings as the darkness slowly faded. Then the sun appeared like a sudden, silent explosion of color. The sun momentarily split itself in half as it rose across the horizon, burning away the clouds to reveal the blue of the sky and the cosmos.
The speaker changed direction, walking unsteadily, as though in the frenzied heat of a dream, down the hill back to the dark trees, and then the speaker approached the horses.
They were still completely motionless, but now there was steam emanating from them, and the dew on their bodies reflected the sun's light. Their stiff, rock-like hair and back legs seemed to be thawing out.
Meanwhile, the frost on the surrounding landscape glistened in the sunlight. Even so, the horses remained totally silent.
Not a single horse made a sound through its nose or stomped its foot. Instead, their hanging heads remained as calm and motionless as the line between the earth and sky, which was far above the lowlands, in the red beams of sunlight that fell over every part of the landscape.
When the speaker is surrounded by the chaos of busy streets, going about their life over the years, they hope to remember this moment: being in an utterly isolated place, between small rivers and colored clouds, listening to the sounds of birds and the silence of the endless, unchanging horizon.
The speaker "The Horses" describes an early morning walk through a hilly, rural landscape. The poem begins "in the hour-before-dawn dark," when everything is cold, silent, and still, including a group of sleeping horses that the speaker passes by. Their stability and "patien[ce]" inspire the speaker, who hopes to remember this peaceful country morning when back in the noisy "din" of the city. Through its memorable descriptions of the stillness of the horses and their surroundings, the poem finds deep inspiration in the serenity, splendor, and permanence of nature.
The speaker describes pastoral scenery that's dark, silent, and austere—in short, not obviously inspiring—in almost reverent terms. The speaker notices the "[e]vil air," which is freezing cold, and the absence of even a single "leaf" or "bird." The world is "cast in frost," and the speaker's smoky breath twists in the air. Noticing the horses, the speaker compares them to giant statues: though they're breathing, they make "no move" or "sound," and they appear to be sleeping. So still and silent are they, and the entire landscape, that the speaker compares the horses to “[g]rey silent fragments / Of a grey silent world."
Following a colorful, dramatic sunrise, the speaker turns back and finds the horses still motionless. The speaker is moved by their patience, which seems to reflect the timelessness of nature itself. Even as the sun rises, the horses are asleep in the same place: "[t]here, still they stood." The pun on "still"—meaning both that the horses remain and that they are unmoving—emphasizes the animals' poise. The horses are "patient as the horizons," a simile that evokes the endlessness of the line between the earth and sky and links the horses with nature's own everlasting stability.
The speaker is inspired by the horses' unchanging beauty, contrasting it with the "din of crowded streets" the speaker will find elsewhere (presumably in a city). Thinking of the uncertain, noisy, chaotic future in store, the speaker cherishes this moment of peace, stability, and beauty.
"The Horses" juxtaposes the serenity of the countryside with the "din" (commotion) of the "city." The near-total silence of the pastoral landscape awes the speaker into a state of heightened emotion and sensitivity. In this elevated state of mind, the speaker cherishes the silence of nature and hopes to remember it back in the noisy city. The poem thus portrays quiet natural landscapes as more lasting, beautiful, and spiritually fulfilling than urban turmoil.
The poem establishes the near-total silence of the countryside, where "not a leaf, not a bird" makes a sound, and "a frost-making stillness" predominates. The speaker also emphasizes the silence of the horses themselves, observing that they "made no sound" and "[n]ot one snorted or stamped." In fact, the whole landscape remains hushed—the world is "grey" and "silent," and the speaker "listen[s] in emptiness" to the immense quiet all around.
Suddenly, a birdcall breaks the silence. The speaker describes the curlew's unexpected cry as a "tear," emphasizing the power that even a single sound has in this quiet. The cry seems to herald the rising of the sun, which transforms the view by brightening the overwhelming gray and bringing out the "detail" of the landscape. Afterward, however, the world is again silent: the curlew's "tear" is the only sound in the poem, and it's brief, described in just one line. For the speaker, the single, startling noise seems to make the silence afterward more profound.
The speaker contrasts the silence of the country with the commotion of the city, suggesting that the memory of the country will refresh and comfort them in the midst of urban noise. Observing the silent horses makes the speaker think ruefully of the "din of crowded streets." Eventually, the speaker will have to return to city life, where the "din" and innumerable "faces" of passersby will represent a stark, sad contrast with the hushed beauty of nature. The speaker clearly prefers the quiet beauty of this place to the noise and crowds of the city. The expansive quiet of nature allows the speaker to appreciate individual sights, sounds, and living things. The city, the speaker implies, is the opposite: annoyingly noisy and overcrowded, and totally lacking in natural beauty.
Broadly, then, the speaker suggests that the quiet countryside is more inspiring, rewarding, and spiritually healthy than the city. The speaker even makes a kind of prayerful wish—"May I still meet my memory in so lonely a place"—that expresses a reverence for these natural surroundings. The speaker emphasizes that the "horizons" of the countryside will "endure," perhaps implying that cities are temporary and insignificant by comparison.
This attitude calls back to the 19th-century Romantic tradition, embodied by poets such as William Wordsworth and John Keats. Much as the speaker of Wordsworth’s "Tintern Abbey" finds solace in his sweet memories of nature "'mid the din / Of towns and cities," the speaker of "The Horses" finds nature's peace and beauty spiritually restorative. Through its lush, awe-filled language, "The Horses" illustrates how being in nature—or even just remembering nature—can bring lasting contentment.
I climbed through ...
... cast in frost.
"The Horses" begins with an unnamed "I," the speaker, "climb[ing]" through the woods in the very early morning, before the sun has risen. The blunt alliteration of "dawn" and "dark" makes the poem's language feel heavy and labored, perhaps evoking the effort it takes for the speaker to "climb" this hill.
The speaker uses rich imagery to convey the cold and darkness of the world at this hour, which is so still it seems to be frozen through and through. The "air," meanwhile, is "Evil"—menacingly dark. There's no movement or sound whatsoever—"Not a leaf, not a bird," the speaker says, using both anaphora and asyndeton to emphasize just how still and silent the landscape is. The "world," in fact, seems "cast in frost"—a phrase that suggests the world is covered with ice crystals and that it's a statue made of frost. The full stop caesura in the middle of line 4 brings the poem to a halt, evoking that frosty stillness even more:
A world cast in frost. I came out above the wood
These opening lines also establish the poem's form. "The Horses" is written in free verse couplets, two-line stanzas without regular meter or rhyme. The lines vary in length (line 1 is quite long, while lines 2 and 3 are much shorter), and most (but not all) of them are end-stopped, which adds to the sense of emptiness, darkness, and cold in these first few lines.
I came out ...
... the sky ahead.
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Get LitCharts A+And I saw ...
... grey silent world.
I listened in ...
... from the darkness.
Then the sun ...
... to the horses.
There, still they ...
... red levelling rays—
In din of ...
... the horizons endure.
The horses symbolize the serenity and stability of the natural world, something the poem sets in stark contrast to the "din" of modern life.
These animals are "[h]uge," still, and silent, and they appear to be sleeping. The horses are also utterly indifferent to the speaker's presence; they don't snort or jerk their heads when the speaker passes. Early in the poem, in a striking metaphor, the speaker compares the horses to "[g]rey silent fragments // Of a grey silent world." Nature is a colossal force, all this language suggests, made of many individual "fragments" that are themselves mysterious, powerful, and moving.
Later in the poem, when the speaker again encounters the horses, they are essentially unchanged. Though they are now "steaming and glistening under the flow of light" following the sunrise, they're still unmoving and silent, "their hung heads patient as the horizons." For the speaker, the horses come to symbolize the unchanging, steadfast, patient quality of nature that makes it a source of comfort and solace, especially amid the "din of crowded streets" the speaker dreads returning to.
"The Horses" is filled with striking metaphors that bring its imagery to life.
For example, in line 4, the speaker says that the world is "cast in frost." This just means that the world is icy cold, covered in a thin layer of frost; the phrase "cast in frost" makes it sound like the world is a sculpture made from ice, however, emphasizing just how cold and still the landscape is.
The metaphors in line 5 similarly convey the harshness of this environment. The thick, gray, twisting fog of the speaker's breath becomes "tortuous statues" in the metallic, pre-dawn light. Later, the speaker says that "frost showed its fires": metaphorical imagery conveying the way the sunlight flashes brilliantly off the frost-covered land.
Many of the metaphors in the poem focus on the horses themselves, which the speaker compares to megaliths (large stones used in ancient religious practices), "[g]rey silent fragments," and the horizon. Their flowing manes are so still they might as well be "stone." All of these imaginative comparisons emphasize the unmoving, quiet, patient nature of the horses, who take no notice of the speaker's movements, nor the curlew's call, nor even the rising sun. Ultimately, the animals' constancy comes to symbolize the unchanging reliability of nature itself, which comforts the speaker in the face of the chaotic "din" of crowded city streets.
The speaker also uses a striking metaphor to describe the curlew's sudden, piercing call. Instead of describing this as a sound, song, whistle, or simply call, the speaker uses the word "tear." The word (which is also a pun) implies both the mourning sound of the bird's two-note call and also its violent edge. It's almost as if the sudden sound rips the silence apart, thereby prompting the sudden change in the sky as the sun begins to rise in earnest.
Likewise, when the speaker observes that "detail leafed from the darkness," there's a metaphorical comparison being made between the details of nature, which the rising sun makes gradually visible, and the organic growth of plants' leaves. The metaphor enriches the speaker's sense that the rising sun makes the natural world come alive in a particularly vivid, moving way.
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Cold enough to produce ice crystals in the air.
"The Horses" is written in free verse couplets: two-line stanzas with no regular meter or rhyme scheme. The use of couplets makes the poem appear longer on the page; it stretches the speaker's descriptions out and fills the poem with blank space, evoking the stillness, silence, and isolation of the pre-dawn natural world.
In two instances, one line of the couplet is broken apart, creating two half-lines. This is the case with lines 14-15 ("Grey silent [...] silent world") and lines 26–27 ("And came to the horses [...] they stood,"). These breaks create moments of special intensity, adding yet more space and silence to the poem.
"The Horses" doesn't follow any particular meter. Its couplets are written in free verse, and the lines vary in length from quite short (line 23 has only two words: "I turned") to fairly long. Free verse keeps the poem's language feeling meditative and intimate, as though readers are getting a glimpse into the speaker's mind.
Again, "The Horses" is written in free verse. As such, it doesn't have a regular rhyme scheme. As with the poem's lack of meter, the lack of regular rhyme keeps things feeling intimate and unpredictable. A steady rhyme scheme would likely feel overly stiff and controlled for a subdued poem that marvel's at nature's stately, serene beauty.
That said, there are a few isolated, subtle instances of rhyme that contribute to the poem's sonic texture and emotional richness. There's a subtle end rhyme between "move" in line 10 and "hooves" in line 11, for example. And there's an internal rhyme in line 20 as the speaker describes the rising sun "splitting to its core tore and flung cloud." The close chime between "core" and "tore" produces a moment of extraordinary intensity that reflects the breathtaking beauty of the sunrise. The internal rhyme also highlights the almost violent nature of the sun, which the speaker describes as erupting, splitting, tearing and flinging, and shaking. Though the speaker finds the sunrise beautiful, the poem also acknowledges the awesome, raw power of nature.
The speaker of "The Horses" is never identified by age, gender, appearance, or any other characteristic. It's clear, however, that the speaker is an early riser (at least on the morning the poem takes place!) and appreciates being in the natural world. This person climbs a wooded hill before "dawn" and finds beauty in both the icy, silent darkness and in the vibrant colors and stirring warmth of the sunrise.
When the speaker imagines a future moment "[i]n din of crowded streets," it's clear that this vision of the city is less than pleasant. The speaker prefers the solitude, quiet, and beautiful mystery of nature to the hustle and bustle of city streets. That preference explains the speaker's wish to "still meet my memory" of this life-changing morning on the moors. The speaker's memory of nature's beauty acts, in some sense, as a talisman against the potentially corrupting or depressing effects of the city.
It's possible, though by no means necessary, to take the speaker of "The Horses" as being Ted Hughes himself. Hughes grew up in the Yorkshire moors, so the natural setting of "The Horses" would've been familiar to him. In fact, he may well have been thinking of a particular place when he wrote the poem, though it's impossible to know for sure. Hughes also had a lifelong passion for nature and especially animals.
"The Horses" takes place during the speaker's early morning walk through a rural, isolated landscape. When the poem begins, the sun has yet to rise: it's "the hour-before-dawn." The speaker climbs up a thickly wooded hill and looks down on the still-dark valleys below. The world is "cast in frost," icy, silent, and, importantly, utterly still: the speaker repeatedly points out the complete lack of motion. Eventually, the sun rises, revealing more detail as its vivid colors illuminate the landscape. The gray sky becomes blue as the sun burns away the clouds. The lush beauty of this natural setting, as contrasted with the harsh "din" of the city, brings the speaker solace.
Though the poem never specifies as much, it's likely that "The Horses" takes place in, or was at least inspired by, the Yorkshire moors where Ted Hughes spent his childhood. A moor is an open area of uncultivated land, often on a large, elevated plateau; it's sometimes also called a heath. In the North York Moors, today a national park in the United Kingdom, there are wide expanses of heather, a type of evergreen shrub, and many valleys, woodland areas, and hills and overlooks—much like the terrain the speaker traverses in "The Horses." Moreover, the presence of the curlew, which primarily favors moorlands, grasslands, and bogs in Scotland and northern England, makes it likely that the poem is set somewhere in Yorkshire. It's even possible that Hughes had a particular place (a specific wood and moor-ridge) in mind, though it's impossible to say.
"The Horses" was published in 1957 in Ted Hughes's first collection, The Hawk in the Rain. The book garnered immediate acclaim and became a major turning point in English poetry, especially in the U.K., where it found a wide readership and continues to influence contemporary poets.
Hughes grew up in West Riding, Yorkshire, a relatively rural part of England, and he cultivated an early interest in the natural world that would influence his poetry. Hughes was both reverent and unsentimental about nature, 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. Animals also occupy a central role in Hughes's poetry.
"The Horses" plays with a classic Romantic trope: an emotional speaker recalling the quiet, peaceful countryside in the middle of the noisy city. When the speaker hopes to "meet my memory" of the beautiful sunrise on the moors "in so lonely a place" as a bustling city (likely London), Hughes may be alluding specifically to Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey," whose speaker similarly recalls his sweet memories of nature "'mid the din / Of towns and cities." Hughes may also be thinking of Yeats's "Lake Isle of Innisfree," whose speaker dreams of building a small cabin in nature while standing "on the roadway, or on the pavements grey."
Hughes's early work was also a reaction to the Movement, a group of English writers including Philip Larkin, Donald Davie, and Kingsley Amis that emphasized Englishness and tradition while rejecting what they saw as the romantic excesses of poets such as Dylan Thomas. Hughes's inventive, expansive use of alliteration and rhythm—especially the incantatory, sensuous, and indeed romantic style on display in poems like "The Horses"—was a reaction against the polite, polished verse of the Movement poets.
Finally, Hughes was also deeply influenced by the work of his wife, fellow poet Sylvia Plath. Over the course of their (often tormented) marriage, the pair produced a rich, unsettling body of work. Both were inspired by the English countryside in which they set up home.
Though the setting of "The Horses" isn't clearly identified, the poem—like many others in The Hawk in the Rain—is undoubtedly influenced by Ted Hughes's childhood in the Yorkshire Moors, where he was surrounded by woods, animals, and the bounty of nature. Hughes had a lifelong affection for animals and was a serious fisherman, and nature remained a powerful influence on, and presence in, his work throughout his life.
"The Horses" was also written at a time of transition and uncertainty in the U.K. World War II had been won at a heavy cost, and the economic, social, political, and literary contrasts between urban centers, especially London, and the countryside were becoming increasingly stark. Moreover, the colonial legacy of the U.K. had come under increased scrutiny, and British intellectuals and artists sought, in many cases, to define what it meant to write in English while reevaluating the global position of both the British Empire and the English language itself.
This context may have spurred Hughes's desire to dig deep into the history of the language and revive a primordial, elemental, perhaps purer mode of English poetry.
The Poem Out Loud — Listen to a reading of "The Horses."
Who Was Ted Hughes? — A short biography from the Academy of American Poets.
The Hawk in the Rain — A short discussion of Hughes's first book, in which "The Horses" appeared, by scholar Heather Clark.
Ted Hughes at Cambridge — A video exploring Hughes's connection to Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he studied myths and legends as a student.
Poets in Love: Hughes and Sylvia Plath — Frieda Hughes discusses the love, complicated relationship, and poetic legacy of her parents, Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath.