A poem called “The Horses” by Edwin Muir depicts a futuristic nuclear war, one with great lose and sorrow. The poem has a reoccurring motif of silence, however towards the end the survivors hear an unfamiliar noise. It was that of horse’s hooves stomping on the ground. Muir reveals to the reader that there are colts among the team. This is a symbol of innocence and a more harmless time. He says they were dropped into a broken world then proceeds to say, “Yet as if they had come from their own Eden.” This line emphasizes innocence yet again but it also portrays hope for the future. As the allusion to Eden is symbolic of the ‘beginning’ of time when God created the world. The next line says how we have used these animals - particularly horses
