I run hot and cold on Ted Hughes; he was Sylvia Plath’s husband, and I generally find him a bit opaque and modern. But he wrote quite a bit about horses. This one is probably my favorite.

“The Horses”
Ted Hughes

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 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 the curlews,
Hearing the horizons endure.

I find Kipling at times over-wrought, and this poem definitely has elements of it, but he knew his horses.

“White Horses”
Rudyard Kipling

Where run your colts at pasture?
  Where hide your mares to breed?
'Mid bergs about the Ice-cap
  Or wove Sargasso weed;
By chartless reef and channel,
  Or crafty coastwise bars,
But most the ocean-meadows
  All purple to the stars!

Who holds the rein upon you?
  The latest gale let free.
What meat is in your mangers?
  The glut of all the sea.
'Twixt tide and tide's returning
  Great store of newly dead, --
The bones of those that faced us,
  And the hearts of those that fled.
Afar, off-shore and single,
  Some stallion, rearing swift,
Neighs hungry for new fodder,
  And calls us to the drift:
Then down the cloven ridges --
  A million hooves unshod --
Break forth the mad White Horses
  To seek their meat from God!

Girth-deep in hissing water
  Our furious vanguard strains --
Through mist of mighty tramplings
  Roll up the fore-blown manes --
A hundred leagues to leeward,
  Ere yet the deep is stirred,
The groaning rollers carry
  The coming of the herd!

Whose hand may grip your nostrils --
  Your forelock who may hold?
E'en they that use the broads with us --
  The riders bred and bold,
That spy upon our matings,
  That rope us where we run --
They know the strong White Horses
  From father unto son.

We breathe about their cradles,
  We race their babes ashore,
We snuff against their thresholds,
  We nuzzle at their door;
By day with stamping squadrons,
  By night in whinnying droves,
Creep up the wise White Horses,
  To call them from their loves.

And come they for your calling?
  No wit of man may save.
They hear the loosed White Horses
  Above their fathers' grave;
And, kin of those we crippled,
  And, sons of those we slew,
Spur down the wild white riders
  To school the herds anew.

What service have ye paid them,
  Oh jealous steeds and strong?
Save we that throw their weaklings,
  Is none dare work them wrong;
While thick around the homestead
  Our snow-backed leaders graze --
A guard behind their plunder,
  And a veil before their ways.

With march and countermarchings --
  With weight of wheeling hosts --
Stray mob or bands embattled --
  We ring the chosen coasts:
And, careless of our clamour
  That bids the stranger fly,
At peace with our pickets
  The wild white riders lie.

 . . . .

Trust ye that curdled hollows --
  Trust ye the neighing wind --
Trust ye the moaning groundswell --
  Our herds are close behind!
To bray your foeman's armies --
  To chill and snap his sword --
Trust ye the wild White Horses,
  The Horses of the Lord!

Happy Poetry Month! I love poetry, and am always seeking out more poetry about horses in particular. So for April I thought I’d do a poem a day. I’ll start with one of my favorite horse poems of all time.

“The Runaway”
Robert Frost

Once when the snow of the year was beginning to fall,