Ted Hughes
Ted Hughes
Ted Hughes
Ted Hughes
Ted Hughes
Ted Hughes
Ted Hughes
Ted Hughes
Ted Hughes
Ted Hughes
Ted Hughes
Ted Hughes
Ted Hughes
Ted Hughes
Ted Hughes
Ted Hughes
Ted Hughes
Ted Hughes
Ted Hughes
Ted Hughes
Ted Hughes
Ted Hughes
Ted Hughes
Ted Hughes
Ted Hughes
Ted Hughes
Ted Hughes
Ted Hughes
Ted Hughes
This poem was published in 1957 in the Hawk in the Rain collection. Hughes writes of the approach of winter, of ice and its power. This reminds him also of the past Ice Ages and how they changed and forged the terrain that is now our environment.
Structure
The poem comprises ten couplets, that is,...
October is marigold, and yet
A glass half full of wine left out
To the dark heaven all night, by dawn
Has dreamed a premonition
Of ice across its eye as if
The ice-age had begun its heave.
The lawn overtrodden and strewn
From the night before, and the whistling green
Shrubbery are doomed. Ice
Has got its spearhead into place.
First a skin, delicately here
Restraining a ripple from the air;
Soon plate and river on pond and brook;
Then tons of chain and massive lock
To hold rivers. Then, sound by sight
Will Mammoth and Sabre-tooth celebrate
Reunion while a fist of cold
Squeezes the fire at the core of the world,
Squeezes the fire at the core of the heart,
And now it is about to start.