Edwin Muir's "Scotland's Winter" and "The Horses"
Edwin Muir was a Scottish poet born in 1887 who lived until 1959 ("Edwin Muir"). His family's transition in 1901 from an agricultural life to one in the commercial-industrial city of Glasgow was a shock to him and his entire family and resulted in the deaths of Muir's father, mother, and two brothers within a five-year period ("Edwin Muir"). For Muir, it was so disorienting that he likened it to time travel, writing, "I was born before the Industrial Revolution, and am now about two hundred years old. But I have skipped about a hundred and fifty of them" ("Edwin Muir"). After arriving at 1901, he relates, "But I myself was still in 1751, and remained there for a long time. All my life since I have been trying to overhaul that invisible leeway" ("Edwin Muir"). Another strong influence in his writing was his Christian faith, which is seen throughout his work, both openly and in symbolism that he used. This paper will examine two of his poems, "Scotland's Winter" and "The Horses," noting where Muir's personal life and beliefs surface in them.
Richard K. Cross notes that in "Scotland's Winter," there is evidence of Muir's dislike of "not only the Calvinist notion of an all-too-transcendent deity but the degradation of the flesh, and of feeling, it entails." Muir saw the advent of Calvinism into Scotland as a spiritual winter. This is evidenced by his winterlike "frozen" and "dead" terminology and references, such as "The miller's daughter walking by/With frozen fingers soldered to her basket" and "Percy and Douglas dead/And Bruce on his burial bed/Where he lies white as may/With wars and leprosy/And all the kings before/This land was kingless..." ("'Scotland's Winter'-Edwin Muir"). The line "This land that with its dead and living waits the Judgement Day" is a direct and unmistakable reference to the Christian concept of the Judgment Day in which the dead will...