Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Frederick Louis MacNeice’s "Wolves" expresses a yearning for simplicity and a rejection of overthinking and constant reflection. The speaker seeks to escape the burden of analyzing life's complexities—its ebb and flow, its transient nature—and desires instead to focus on the immediate present. The poem evokes a sense of exhaustion with the reflective mind, which finds “pathos in dogs,” “undeveloped handwriting,” and in other fleeting, everyday things. This sensitivity to the small and the transient has become overwhelming, making the speaker long for a simpler, more direct engagement with life.

The opening lines establish the speaker’s desire to abandon reflection. MacNeice explores how reflection leads to seeing pathos and meaning in things that may not require such depth of thought—dogs, children’s sandcastles, or the innocence of youth. These things, beautiful in their simplicity, are clouded by the speaker's need to intellectualize and analyze them. The speaker wants to let go of this burden of reflection, to cease finding meaning in impermanence, such as the sandcastles “flushed by the children’s bedtime” and erased by the tide.

The speaker also grapples with the duality of life’s flux and permanence, symbolized by the tide. The tide’s coming and going reflects the cyclical nature of life, but the speaker rejects the need to constantly reflect on its philosophical or tragic implications. He expresses a desire to live in the “nearer future,” free from the constraints of contemplating time’s endless cycles or its permanence. The line “I do not want to be a tragic or philosophic chorus” underscores this desire to move beyond the role of one who reflects deeply on life’s meaning. Instead, the speaker wishes to be present, to live without constantly interpreting the world around him.

As the poem progresses, the speaker urges a collective action: “Come then all of you, come closer, form a circle, / Join hands and make believe.” This call to form a circle and join hands suggests a desire for human connection and solidarity, an attempt to ward off the existential fears and uncertainties that plague the reflective mind. The “wolves of water” that “howl along our coast” represent these fears—perhaps the inevitability of death, the unknown, or the uncontrollable forces of nature that threaten to overwhelm human existence.

The poem ends on a note of quiet resignation and make-believe. The speaker urges the group to “make believe that joined / Hands will keep away the wolves of water,” recognizing that this belief is a comforting illusion. The collective action of joining hands, talking, and laughing provides temporary solace, even though it cannot truly fend off the inevitable forces of nature. The final line—“And be it assumed / That no one hears them among the talk and laughter”—acknowledges that the wolves are still present, still howling, but their presence is drowned out by the distractions of human connection and joy.

In "Wolves", MacNeice explores the tension between the desire for simplicity and the reality of life’s complexity. The speaker longs to escape from constant reflection and analysis, seeking instead the comfort of the present and the solace of human connection. The poem suggests that while the threats of life—the “wolves of water”—cannot be completely avoided, the act of coming together, even in make-believe, offers a brief reprieve from the existential anxieties that reflection often brings.

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