The Warm and the Cold

Read 'The Warm and the Cold' by 'Ted Hughes' and provide your summary and literary analysis in the comments section below.

The Warm and the Cold by Ted Hughes

 Freezing dusk is closing
 Like a slow trap of steel
On trees and roads and hills and all
 That can no longer feel.
 But the carp is in its depth
 Like a planet in its heaven.
 And the badger in its bedding
 Like a loaf in the oven.
 And the butterfly in its mummy
 Like a viol in its case.
 And the owl in its feathers
 Like a doll in its lace. 

Freezing dusk has tightened
 Like a nut screwed tight
On the starry aeroplane
 Of the soaring night.
 But the trout is in its hole
 Like a chuckle in a sleeper.
 The hare strays down the highway
 Like a root going deeper.
 The snail is dry in the outhouse
 Like a seed in a sunflower.
 The owl is pale on the gatepost
 Like a clock on its tower. 

Moonlight freezes the shaggy world
 Like a mammoth of ice - 
The past and the future
 Are the jaws of a steel vice.
 But the cod is in the tide-rip
 Like a key in a purse.
 The deer are on the bare-blown hill
 Like smiles on a nurse.
 The flies are behind the plaster
 Like the lost score of a jig.
 Sparrows are in the ivy-clump
 Like money in a pig. 

Such a frost
 The flimsy moon
 Has lost her wits. 

 A star falls. 

The sweating farmers
 Turn in their sleep
 Like oxen on spits.

Form: Free verse

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