hello everyone and welcome back to English with Kaylee in today's video we're going to analyze the horses by Ted Hughes um it's a longer poem so get your copy of the poem get a few highlighters ready um and let's do a stanza by stanza analysis together so just before we get into it I do have resources for teaching and studying Ted Hughes including this PowerPoint um that I'm about to walk you through you can gain access to that on my test page or my Teachers Pay Teachers page and the links will be in the description below so as always we'll read through the pump together we'll do a short summary in this case a slightly longer one and then we'll discuss the themes we'll do our standard by standard analysis but most importantly at the end I give you a practice essay question um that will that will help you to kind of think about some of the things you may be asked in the exam and then you can leave your comments down below and share your ideas with other people um and I'll be sure to respond and kind of point you in the right direction so let's read through the horses 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 torturous statues in the iron light but the valleys were draining the darkness till the more line blackening drags of the brightening gray halved the sky ahead and I saw the horses huge in the dense gray ten together megalith still they breathed making no move with draped manes and tilted hind Hooves making no sound I passed not once snorted or jerked its head gray silent fragments of a gray still world I listened in emptiness on the more Ridge the curl lives tear turned its Edge on the silence slowly detailed lift 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 tuned stumbling in a 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 that tilted hind hooves stirring under a saw while all around them Frost showed its fires but still they made no sound not once noted or stamped their hung heads patient as the horizons High over valleys in the red leveling rays in din of the crowded streets going among the youths the faces may I still meet my memory in so lonely a place between the streams and the red clouds hearing curloos hearing the horizons endure okay so that is the horses one of the longer ones um in the the GCSE selection for 2023 onwards um so a slightly longer summary to get through so we start with the speaker is climbing the hill in darkness and the atmosphere from the offset the atmosphere seems quite ominous um and there's this icy Stillness around around the speaker the speakers alone and they feel as if everything surrounding them is frozen solid um even the speaker's breath creates these fog clouds in the cold gray light as the speaker climbs the mountain they see the sky split in half as Darkness lifts towards the morning sun and it's in this moment that the speaker spots the long-awaited title animal spots the horses there are 10 of them they stand perfectly still like statues and movement and color and their means of hair flow and their back hooves are resting at an angle and they remain still as the speaker passes they're almost given this ghost-like quality in how tranquil and still they are the speaker listens for a sound whilst looking at the land below the hill and that's when we hear this bird akulu cry out and they interrupt the silence and it's after this moment that the world starts to to come to life in the morning as the speaker describes the Sun as it burns away the clouds and it reveals the blue skies and upon seeing this beautiful sunrise the the speaker then returns towards the dark trees and approaches the horses once more so we really see a journey here of the the speaker approaching the horses going up to the top of the mountain witnessing this amazing sunrise and then that return journey and how things have changed or importantly how things have not changed so they remain motionless the horses um and their bodies reflect the Sun's light their Mains and their backlights seem to have thawed in the morning sun as they're described but there's still stone-like um and they remain very calm and still as the sun ascends it to the sky and then finally when the speaker thinks about their return to the hustle and bustle of the city streets they comment that they hope to remember this moment a place of complete isolation listening to the sounds of the birds and the Silence of the Endless unchanged Horizon foreign so in terms of themes there are two main themes that we see in the horses the first one being that the stability and beauty of nature if we consider the horses to be a symbol of that unchanged stability that nature provides um will lend ourselves to a deeper layered analysis and also whilst it's only brought up in the final two stanzas it's very important to consider the idea of rural silence versus Urban noise um in that moment and how the speaker hopes to remember it when they're back in the city so there are 19 stanzas uh to to the horses so I'm just going to split them into groups for us to look at so let's start with stanzas one to four um we'll talk about the the highlighted sections in a little while so let's just take a look at the the first the very first line I climb through Woods in the hour before Dawn dark so from the offset this blunt alliteration here um with the D and the d The Dawn dark sound it's quite a heavy sound and and it seems very labored um and this could reflect that that difficult climb that the speaker is is enduring and is going on evil air are Frost making Stillness not a leaf not a bird a World cast in Frost powerful imagery throughout the poem um but here particularly we get this sense of of the cold and the Darkness um and and this is actually something a person may initially fear so that's why I said in in the summary in in the the overall summary that it does seem ominous at this point we have a lot of vocabulary a lot of words that lend itself to something that could be feared this evil air you know a world-casting frost um but as it turns out that that as the as the speaker Journeys through the woods um the the atmosphere changes within the poem not a leaf not a bird so we've got this anaphora here not a not a um just emphasizing how still and Silent nature is and we have a World cast in Frost you know we get the sense that the world is almost a statue which has been coated in this icy layer uh you know a very impactful especially when we consider that's how we later see the horses as well which just allows us to to suggest that the horses are that symbol of nature itself so we have a sazera here A World cast in Frost and that's the zero just really evokes that Frosty Stillness that's been described in the first two stanzas after the zazira is when we see a change um in in the story itself in the poem um I came out above the woods so you get the sense of this kind of clarity and this moment of stepping out of the darkness and this is emphasized here by this on John meant that physical movement of of the the speaker ascending so when my breath left torturous statues in the iron light but the valleys were draining the darkness till the moorline blackening drags of the brightening Gray so here we do see a change in the atmosphere once the speaker emerges so it moves from this more ominous atmosphere and tone think about those words we've seen evil you know a world-casting frost torture us that's the one highlighted in blue and how it then moves to something which is lighter it gives us a sense of clarity those are highlighted in yellow light draining the darkness brightening in half the sky there's a different sense there till the more line now more line um is is kind of I would say it's a key word in hughes's Works um and this is where you want to show your your ao1 your understanding Hughes grew up exploring the Moors he lived in The Valleys of England um and he loves his love of nature um that relationship that he has with nature and in his writing he often gives nature I mean of course Nature has a will of its only that you know it's that ever it's that thing that remains unchanged um so it's important to focus in on that particular word as well um to show that you don't just have that um surface level analysis okay then we have quite a lot of plosive B and D sounds in in stanza's three and four that plosive B and D of the blackening dregs of the brightening gray the draining the darkness it adds a sense of drama and intensity to the scene as the darkness lifts um all leading to that that Climax and the crescendo of that beautiful beautiful sunrise and finally after waiting for so long um right at the end of stanza 4 we're finally introduced to the horses and I saw the horses it said very nonchalantly at this point a very matter of fact um however that the symbolism and the meaning that it takes on later on in the poem shows um how impactful the moment was so stanza's five to eight then so we see the horses here they are described as still silent almost colorless um in in their physical appearance possibly sleeping but as I said earlier we get that almost ghost-like scent so go with the colors gray silent fragments of a gray still World um and it still silent and the color it doesn't even they don't seem to be of color yet so megalith so we get this just this powerful imagery of these huge monuments you know that are to be that are to be worshiped um just because of the the their size and importance they breathed making no move with draped manes and tilted hind Hooves making no sound um we'll go back to that particular stanza later on because it is repeated with just that one change of draped Stone means showing that that permanence of it and how they they do remain unchanged but the the last um stanzas the the end of stanza 7 and that's Standalone line it stands at eight gray silent fragments of a gray still world so this metaphor and and the poem as a whole but this particular metaphor uses the horses as a symbol of the steadfastness and stability of nature um and also of its indifference of the humans that inhabit it you know it it prevails over um over human you know humankind um and Human Nature and very much like the pre-dawn day they are silent unmoving and gray so again we've got that similarity in the description of the horses and and the world at that time again showing that link between the two ten together making no move and hind Hooves so alliteration is used throughout these stanzas here and it does create this lyrical harmonious description of the horses in nature okay and we move on to stanza's 9 and 12. um so let's just take a look at the first sentence I listened in emptiness on the more Ridge so we just here get the that moment for the speaker where they stop and they take in the silence around them so we've seen them climbing we've seen them with this very physical challenge before them and finally we get a moment where they stop and they take in the silence and whilst taken in the silence they hear the curly sound breakthrough okay so the curloos now this is what is interesting this is a pun on the word Tia or tear depending on how you read it if it's a tear we get the sense of a cry um so a sense of sadness however if it was a tear we get the sense of of the sound tearing through the silence quite a violent act um so there's there's two different ways of reading that particular word choice but what's very interesting is that this is about the in the halfway mark of the poem and it's here after we hear this this bird's cry that the world begins to weak um but and just just a quick note is that akulu is very common in northern England and people do say that the sound it has is is quite sad um so that will support the idea of a cry from the bird slowly detail lift from the darkness so we get this sense now of the Wonder and the awe of nature from the speaker in how the world around him is is changing however yet still remains unchanged it has that cycle which which is unchanged then the sun orange red red erupted and that word choice there really emphasizes the climax of the moment so it's that beauty and the power of the natural world and and also the surprise of the speaker um in witnessing this moment and how it changes them and that's reflected in that on genre and red red erupted silently and splitting to its Court tall and flung this repetition of red red just emphasizing and and reflecting the intensity of the colors in that view that that lies before the speaker okay it shook the Gulf of button now what's very interesting is that from the beginning we've had this kind of an ominous feeling to to the poem and here that continues we see this vague sense of danger you know in tearing something to the core and shaking the gulf open but these here are used as dramatic verbs to depict the Rising Sun to the reader these dramatic verbs are used to emphasize the the Beauty and the magnitude of of the the sunrise and what it does for the speaker and that's what we're going to talk about now there seems to be something so profound that it seems to have shook the speaker to their core um and highlighting that this is a moment to remember Nature's Beauty but also it's potentially violent and unknowable power that's something that is always kind of in the background for us um especially you know when things happen in the world when we see these natural disasters it does have the potential to be incredibly violent um and but this moment of of witnessing nature at its most beautiful really seems to have have shaken the speaker something so profound has happened for them um and of course we do see this internal rhyme um in the core and tall and again that internal rhyme it does add into intensity and drama to the moment but of course also something of beauty when we see that Harmony so even when the context and the words may seem have that vague sense of danger the the musicality of it shows that it's something that is that is beautiful as well and finally at the end of the stanza a very short the shortest sentence within the entire poem I tuned and we don't only see that physical movement but that emotional Journey as well for the speaker as they now have bear witnessed this beautiful sunrise and they turn and now they're going to head back down towards the dark woods and we know that they're going to approach the horses once more so stanza's 13 to 16 it starts with the speaker stumbling in a fever of a dream and there really seems here to have been a change in the subconscious of the speaker um you know with that connotation of the dream um the unconscious mind they move down towards the horses once more And when they see the horses we they are described again they're still they stood so again for the most part they are unchanged and we've got this this pan again on the word still so this could either mean without motion so highlighting that how they how even as the world moves around them they remain without motion they don't move or still meaning the same as before but here we get the sense of the things that have changed slightly for them now steaming and glistening under the flow of light so the frostiest thores so that ominous feeling slowly melts away it stores under the sunlight and again this is just that subtle hint at the power of nature especially when we consider the imagery of the fires as well while all around them the for the frost showed its fires so that power of nature and that you know the heat that has been created from from the sunlight their drape Stone made means they're tilted hind hoofs but still they made no sound not once snorted or stamped so again going back to that that repetition of the previous lines highlights how the voices remain for the most part very much unchanged and that's what we can use there as that metaphor for stability of nature okay and we move to the last stanza I think what's very important to mention at this point is that when you're analyzing poetry um one of the one of the the most common pieces of feedback or comments that we see from examiners is that people analyze the first part of the poem very much in depth um and they you know they either run out of time or forget to analyze the last part don't do that make sure that you are commenting on all parts of the poem because it in effect it's a story especially with this particular poem it's that journey and you need to comment on it so let's look at the last three stanzas then we'll talk about four meter online but don't forget then we'll discuss an essay question as well so we move to their hung heads patient as the horizons and this just implying that like the horizons they continue in this very much undisturbed cycle very much unchanged um which again just highlights Nature's enduring power and beauty in the red leveling Rays I think the word leveling is very important here because leveling gives us a sense of balance so here we see the balance and Harmony of the natural world and the last two stanzas um are incredibly important because it's actually one of the main themes that's discussed throughout throughout the poem however it's not explicitly mentioned until the very end we see this imagined return to Urban Life um and and the speaker says may I still meet my memory in so lonely a place so the wish and and almost the necessity of remembering this moment of Peace of clarity of awe of Wonder um and of Stillness and calm which is something that I think a lot of people all of us can forget in our day-to-day lives and that is emphasized by this alliteration of the M sound it's almost like a soft humming like um a calming sense of meditation for the mind which is what that speaker has experienced in viewing the the sunrise between the steams and the red clouds hearing coulouse hearing the horizons endure and I think this is where we get the speaker admitting that they wish that they themselves could be like the horses patient and at peace with the world around them so even when they hear the curloos cry and the sun tear through that the speaker themselves in daily life can remain calm and at peace okay so let's take a look at the form the meter and the Rhine before we take a look at the essay question so the form it's written in free verse but it has you know it's written in couplets um in writing it in such a way it appears much longer on the page um which allows the which allows Hughes to stretch out the descriptions um and create these blank spaces that reflect the the isolation and Silence of the world before morning before the sunrise the meter it doesn't follow any particular meter but the poems Pace feels very meditative and intimate um because we as a reader we gain insight into the speaker's mind and their own Journey um and that realization of that peace Clarity and calm that comes from that you know from the moments appreciating nature rhyme there are moments of rhyme we spoke about the core and tour um and that really helps to create that moment of intensity of the beauty of the sunrise but again by not having a set rhyme scheme it allows the poem to be more intimate and imp and unpredictable as we gain insight into the speaker's mindset okay so the essay question I'm going to leave you with uh for the horses is how does Hughes reflect the beauty of nature in the horses so I'm really excited to see what ideas you share in the comment section below and I'm always replying to messages um and engaging so please do share your your thoughts and feelings on this poem and if you were writing an essay what would you be sure to include um and we'll have a good chat about it thank you very much for watching I do hope these videos help please don't forget to like And subscribe for more English literature analysis and I'll catch you in the next one bye guys foreign [Music]