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 tortuous statues in the iron light. But the valleys were draining the darkness Till the moorline—blackening dregs of the brightening grey— Halved the sky ahead. And I saw the horses: Huge in the dense grey—ten together— Megalith-still. They breathed, making no move, With draped manes and tilted hind-hooves, Making no sound. I passed: not one snorted or jerked its head. Grey silent fragments Of a grey silent world. I listened in emptiness on the moor-ridge. The curlew's tear turned its edge on the silence. Slowly detail leafed 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 turned Stumbling in the 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, their tilted hind-hooves Stirring under a thaw while all around them The frost showed its fires. But still they made no sound. Not one snorted or stamped, Their hung heads patient as the horizons, High over valleys, in the red levelling rays — In din of the crowded streets, going among the years, the faces, May I still meet my memory in so lonely a place Between the streams and the red clouds, hearing curlews, Hearing the horizons endure.

memory free verse haunting

The Horses - form Summary

A Dawn Journey Returns

The poem is structured as a dawn journey: the speaker climbs from frozen darkness into sunrise, then returns to the motionless horses. This circular movement makes the horses seem outside ordinary time, unchanged even as the landscape transforms. The final shift to crowded city streets turns the encounter into a sustaining memory, linking the horses' silence and patience with a longing for enduring natural solitude.

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