The poem
This house has been far out at sea all night, The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills, Winds stampeding the fields under the window Floundering black astride and blinding wet
Till day rose; then under an orange sky The hills had new places, and wind wielded Blade-light, luminous black and emerald, Flexing like the lens of a mad eye.
At noon I scaled along the house-side as far as The coal-house door. Once I looked up - Through the brunt wind that dented the balls of my eyes The tent of the hills drummed and strained its guyrope,
The fields quivering, the skyline a grimace, At any second to bang and vanish with a flap; The wind flung a magpie away and a black- Back gull bent like an iron bar slowly. The house
Rang like some fine green goblet in the note That any second would shatter it. Now deep In chairs, in front of the great fire, we grip Our hearts and cannot entertain book, thought,
Or each other. We watch the fire blazing, And feel the roots of the house move, but sit on, Seeing the window tremble to come in, Hearing the stones cry out under the horizons.
this poem is a great 1 for revising for an 8 page minimum essay as their is alot to analyse
this poem has been noted as representative of the relationship Ted had with his wife, Sylvia. note that she was emotionally unstable. it is a depiction of the power relationship between trhe physical domination of nature and the fragility of humans.
This is a deep poem. On the one hand, the temptation is to read it as a literal poem, but the first line is too disturbing in its image to allow for a simplistic reading. The house is like a ship lost at sea. Even after the initial "storm" and lack of foundation, more destruction comes. "Rang like some fine green goblet" hints an image of a green-eyed monster. The sound is fragile, as if almost ready to break. Color…
Read the whole commentThis is a deep poem. On the one hand, the temptation is to read it as a literal poem, but the first line is too disturbing in its image to allow for a simplistic reading. The house is like a ship lost at sea. Even after the initial "storm" and lack of foundation, more destruction comes. "Rang like some fine green goblet" hints an image of a green-eyed monster. The sound is fragile, as if almost ready to break.
Color is used with great variation; there are many objects that produce sound, and nature is constantly shifting. I'm sure each bird in the poem has further meaning/symbolism.
Note how many times "eye" is used,each with a level of distortion.
Every detail is crafted with the sense of shifting.
The poem begins with the metaphor of the house as a ship, and further metaphors (the woods crashing, the hills booming) convey that the house has been battered all night as if by powerful waves, as if dragged through the sea by stampeding wet black horses. Even the dawn does not bring peace, and the wind goes on battering like a mad man raising a blade in the sharp light. The house is like a crystal goblet which…
Read the whole commentThe poem begins with the metaphor of the house as a ship, and further metaphors (the woods crashing, the hills booming) convey that the house has been battered all night as if by powerful waves, as if dragged through the sea by stampeding wet black horses. Even the dawn does not bring peace, and the wind goes on battering like a mad man raising a blade in the sharp light. The house is like a crystal goblet which could be shattered by the loud singing of the wind--and the people inside, probably a couple, cannot tolerate anything, including each other, as the wind keeps on threatening, and there is the danger at the heart of the poem, the couple who wish for the fire to be comforting and yet are disquieted by its howling. The only dim sort of comfort may be to know that even the house and its windows want to surrender to the wind, even the stones cry out under its punishment, so that in that sense, all the world is brought together as one under the wind's lash.