Created by Reuben Veysey-Smith
over 9 years ago
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Question | Answer |
Those lumbering horses in the steady plough, On the bare field - I wonder, why, just now, They seemed terrible, so wild and strange, Like magic power on the stony grange. | The diction used is very ordinary, but the caesura shows a change in perspective After this the diction shows fear and magic |
Perhaps some childish hour has come again, When I watched fearful, through the blackening rain, Their hooves like pistons in an ancient mill Move up and down, yet seem as standing still. | The childish hour could be symbol of the speed which childhood goes past and he is lamenting on it Blackening rain could symbolize industrial pollution Simile for pistons, shows the industrial revolution, but the word ancient could show consistency through time |
Their conquering hooves which trod the stubble down Were ritual that turned the field to brown, And their great hulks were seraphims of gold, Or mute ecstatic monsters on the mould | Conquering has connotations of dignity and war Ritual has biblical connotations, and seraphims implies religious majesty and fire Also a symbol for the four horsemen of the apocalypse |
And oh the rapture, when, one furrow done, They marched broad-breasted to the sinking sun! The light flowed off their bossy sides in flakes; The furrows rolled behind like struggling snakes. | Rapture is further biblical connotations Aliteration and sibilance show beauty |
But when at dusk with steaming nostrils home They came, they seemed gigantic in the gloam, And warm and glowing with mysterious fire That lit their smouldering bodies in the mire | They are compared to the uncontrollable and entrancing visual image of fire 'seemed' shows his childhood perception There is connotations of war and the four horseman referencing earlier in the poem |
Their eyes as brilliant and as wide as night Gleamed with a cruel apocalyptic light, Their manes the leaping ire of the wind Lifted with rage invisible and blind | They represent a magnificent and dark force Half rhyme could be showing how they are so powerful they break poetic form, or how he is loosing his childhood memories |
Ah, now it fades! It fades! And I must pine Again for the dread country crystalline, Where the blank field and the still-standing tree Were bright and fearful presences to me. | Repetition is evoking pathos as he laments on the loss of his childhood crystalline shows beauty and is a masculine rhyme, showing how he may have remnants of their power even in adulthood |
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