Analysis of Wild Horses
...dle of winter (as given away by "the hip-high snow"). The poem itself is a free-verse narrative, and tells the story of one man, with no particular rhyme scheme. The heavy, deeply emotional tone is a buried remorse, but not quite sadness but it evokes a “do or die” mentality. He needs the three hundred dollars to support himself even though he pities the band of horses he puts his survival over feelings. The imagery in this poem is mainly sight, images of misery and slaugher “Raw-legs heaving the hip-high snow” makes you almost feel the horses’ pain as the ice wears at their skin, abrasive and cold. Deeply moved by what he sees he describes, “Their eyes glaze with frost./Ice bleeds in their nostrils” as the scene of these horses’ last breaths. Their “dull dead eyes/and the empty meadows” is what he last sees as he turns his back on the place of this murder of innocents. The phrase “Quite bitchin.” Is unusual, obviously this man has said something to make another member of the party mad or critical. Alliteration is the main poetic device used in Wild Horses, “raw legs heaving the hip-high snow,” fi...