Opinion of the Horses by Edwin Muir

People in this poem are scared of their own breathing because this takes them back to the bare essentials of 'LIFE', how vulnerable life is, how alone individuals really are. Silence is often scary and particularly in our world which with all the noise and haste involved in a technological age is quite a rare thing and not sufficiently explored or valued.They cannot, and do not want to hear the radio's news again as it only announced bad news, and fearful news about violence and destructiveness... They also realise how destructive the technology they have created can be, and when they see the horses they feel guilty that they ever SOLD them to BUY TRACTORS. The tractors themselves are now experienced as frightening because they represent the dangers, the terrors of techological development also. They are 'couched and waiting' and they 'leave them to rust'. ~The HORSES are 'natural life', they represent natures power which is also scary, and the people at first fear their 'wildness' and do not appreciate that they can once again be of help to man, they can once again serve man. The poem ends with a sense of gratitude for the return of companionship and 'free servitude' of the horses, and how the human's lives can now have hope in them once again, and a new future.The moral of the story is: do not neglect nature. We are part of nature and we need to value her and seek relationship with her. She can offer healing and helpful and regenerating properties to us. We ignore and rape her at our peril. The natural world is essential to our survival and always will be...Do not become so obsessed with technological advances and kudos that you forget your enormous dependency and gratitude to