Wind
"Wind" is a poem about a wind that breaks things and not the other way around (breaking wind). This is a subtle distinction, often missed by many. Ted Hughes makes his point clear: this isn't a ple...
House at Sea
Right off the bat, the poem gives us this: "This house has been far out at sea all night,/ The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills" (1-2). So, was the house literally out at sea? Thi...
Blade-Light
In lines 6-8, the wind suddenly becomes some sort of knife-wielding mugger: [… the] wind wieldedBlade-light, luminous black and emerald,Flexing like the lens of a mad eye. (6-8) But what exactly...
Tent of the Hills
A hill is not a tent—actually, they're two extremely different things. A hill is solid, made of dirt and stones all piled up (we're not geology experts, but we gather that's the idea). A tent isn...
Ringing Goblet
If you leave open the windows of a house on a windy day, it will generate strange, loud noises—kind of like when you blow over the lip of an empty bottle or jug. (In this case, though, Hughes is...
Crying Stones and Roots of the House
The last time we checked, stones don't actually cry (or, rather, they cry on the inside). But the wind is making them cry out in a metaphorical way: " Hearing the stones cry out under the horizons"...