Page 75 - DENG105_ELECTIVE_ENGLISH_II

Elective English–II

Notes Between trees, and warily a lone

Shadow lags by stump and in hollow.
As Keith comments, “The poem has already sets neat prints upon the page in the line before
we are told that the fox sets them into the snow. The noun ‘shadow’ has to drag itself across
the gap between the lines which separates it from its adjective. And the alliteration of ‘lame’
and ‘lag’ upon a long palatal consonant mimes the meaning to a degree which becomes
obvious if we try to find a substitute for either word.”

Forms and Devices

Ted Hughes extends his central metaphor of fox-as-thought with great skill. Although the fox
is symbolic of poetic creation, the reader is able to maintain a strong sense of it as a “real” fox.
Even when Hughes is conveying abstract ideas, he uses precise detail and concrete sensory
images from the natural world.
Hughes often uses strong contrasts to convey his notion of nature as interacting opposites: life
and death, light and dark, predator and prey. The main contrast in this poem is between the
intense vitality of the imagination (the world of the fox) and the impersonal vacancy of the
poet’s self and environment. The unidentified “something else” in the forest seems more real,
more alive than anything in the room, including the poet. More human feeling is accorded to
the clock in its “loneliness” than to the poet. He is defined in negatives, in absent terms. There
is a disembodied quality to the image of the blank notepaper “where my fingers move,” as if
the fingers had a life of their own and were acting independently.
The abstract phenomenon of the creative process is made into a living creature of independent
will. “Something more near” than the starless night, yet “deeper within darkness,” solidifies
out of the blackness. This apparent contradiction, of something being real yet elusive, is
descriptive of an idea at its genesis. One is aware of the idea’s existence, yet it has not yet
gained sufficient definition for one to grasp it. The atmosphere of suspense relaxes into the
first concrete sensory images of the fox—the cold touch of its nose, then “two eyes”—as the
fox edges cautiously into vision. In the beats of “now,/ And again now, and now,” and the
three consecutive strong stresses of “sets neat prints,” one hears the rhythm of the fox’s
tentative steps.
Hughes often uses alliteration (repetition of consonants) and assonance (repetition of vowel
sounds within words) to add an incantatory quality to his verse and to bring images to life.
In the alliteration of “touches twig, leaf,” one feels the delicacy of the fox’s nose investigating
its environment. The strong sounds of “Of a body that is bold to come/ Across clearings,”
together with the positioning of “Across clearings” at the start of a new stanza, give a sense
of sudden energy as the fox emerges into the open.
The most memorable image forms the poem’s climax: “With a sudden sharp hot stink of fox/
It enters the dark hole of the head.” The fox has realized its symbolic status as metaphor for
thought. The thought fills the expectant vacancy that has been the poet’s consciousness until
now. The image is intensely violent, evoking speed, flavour, temperature, and smell.
Two images introduced at the poem’s beginning and repeated at the end reflect its circular
journey: from the everyday world, into the imaginative world, then back into the everyday
world enriched by the gift of the imagination, the poetic composition. The image of the still-
ticking clock, echoing the third line of the poem, recalls one to the world of time and space
into which creation manifests. “The window is starless still,” also a repeated image, brings one
back full circle to the unchanging eternity that preceded the coming of the thought-fox and
continues undiminished after the event. “The page is printed”—referring to the page one has

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