Ted Hughes "The Horses"

Ted Hughes "The Horses" is one of the more eerier poems that I have read this year.  Its dark tone and damp theme instinctively and instantly create the idea that the four legged beasts represent death and the terror they bring with them.  Hughes goes into deep detail of the dismal scene of the woods and frost surrounding the animals with finer imagery than most poems I interpret.  At first glance, these horses seem to be representing one of the four apocalyptic horses, death, but Hughes sheds light into the poem by shedding light.  By doing this he not only changes tone and theme for the piece but what the horses represent themselves.  He includes that a "red light" splits through the clouds.  To me, this imagery created  not only a stronger theme for death but for the murderous idea of war.  Hughes says in stanza seventeen, " In din of crowded streets, going among the years, the faces/May I still meet my memory in so lonely a place," and creates that these horses have a job to do and nothing will stand in their way.