5. In the book Ted Hughes: The Life of a Poet,
the author writes: Ted's interest in pike
fishing in his teens approached an obsession.
He spoke of dreaming regularly about pike
and about one particular lake where he did
most of his fishing. 'Pike had become fixed at
some very active, deep level in my imaginative
life.' It was as if pike had become symbolic of
his inner, vital being, though he would hardly
have been able to articulate that thought in
his teenage years.
6. Pike, three inches long, perfect
Pike in all parts, green tigering the gold.
Killers from the egg: the malevolent aged grin.
They dance on the surface among the flies.
Or move, stunned by their own grandeur,
Over a bed of emerald, silhouette
Of submarine delicacy and horror.
A hundred feet long in their world.
7. In ponds, under the heat-struck lily pads-
Gloom of their stillness:
Logged on last year's black leaves, watching upward
Or hung in an amber cavern of weeds
The jaws' hooked clamp and fangs
Not to be changed at this date:
A life subdued to its instrument;
The gills kneading quietly, and the pectorals.
8. Three we kept behind glass,
Jungled in weed: three inches, four,
And four and a half: red fry to them-
Suddenly there were two. Finally one
With a sag belly and the grin it was born with.
And indeed they spare nobody.
Two, six pounds each, over two feet long
High and dry and dead in the willow-herb-
9. One jammed past its gills down the other's gullet:
The outside eye stared: as a vice locks-
The same iron in this eye
Though its film shrank in death.
A pond I fished, fifty yards across,
Whose lilies and muscular tench
Had outlasted every visible stone
Of the monastery that planted them-
10. Stilled legendary depth:
It was as deep as England. It held
Pike too immense to stir, so immense and old
That past nightfall I dared not cast
But silently cast and fished
With the hair frozen on my head
For what might move, for what eye might move.
The still splashes on the dark pond,
11. Owls hushing the floating woods
Frail on my ear against the dream
Darkness beneath night's darkness had freed,
That rose slowly toward me, watching.
Ted Hughes (1959)
12. The poem falls into three sections:
first four stanzas describe the Pike and its
habitat.
the next three stanzas look at Pike kept
behind glass;
the final four stanzas recall a specific pond
and the sinister experience of fishing there.
13. Pike, three inches long, perfect
Pike in all parts.
reference to the way babies are seen as
faultless miniature version of adults
tigering : an image of the destructive.
green and gold may recall description of the
Golden Age.
Killers from the egg : they are designed to kill
other animals. Also, it signifies the killer
instinct of the fish.
14. Grandeur: They are very big animals.
delicacy and horror: They are beautiful and
deadly.
A hundred feet long in their world: They are the
kings of the river ruling the submarine life
15. They are like a giant dictator ruling with a rod
of iron instilling fear into other animals. They
patroll the reeds, searching for unwary and slow
smaller fish who do not notice their coming
death until it's too late.
16. The jaws' hooked clamp and fangs
It is about how pikes hunt.
They catch their preys with their teeth.
A life subdued to its instrument
They are like a weapon of death or eating machines.
17. He and his friend put three pikes in a aquarium.
Jungled in weed: A figurative jungle with
unusual inhabitants for a domestic aquarium.
One pike is three inches long; the other two are
bit larger. These three pikes are oberved closely.
The fish even turns to cannibalism to fill the
his stomach. One of them eats the other two.
One survivor with the other two inside him.
18. A similar case in the wild in which he came
across two pikes.
None of them spares another’s life.
Corpses of mutually destructive two pikes in the
wild.
Both of them are dead and dry and on the
surface of the water.
19. One jammed past its gills down the other's gullet
This is an extremely disturbing and unsettling
image. The great struggles of two fish locked in
mortal combat. Both fighting for the same life.In
the end one finally manages to kills the other. As the
victor attempts to swallow his victim, he realizes that
he has bitten off more than he can chew and chokes to
death deprived of oxygen by the food he fought so
hard to kill.
20. The outside eye stared
The eye of the outside fish has an iron
stare—a fish-eyed, alien, blank, dead stare.
The outer fish stares from a dead eye.
21. The rest of the poem describes the poets attempt
to catch a particularly large and old pike.
The “fifty yards across” gives an objective sense of
the size of the pond; the lilies and the tench that
have outlasted monastery stones contrasts the time
dimension of the survival reach of the habitant of
natural habitat against the medieval human
institution of the monastery and its stone
construction.
22. The still, deep pond is so old, legendary and
prehistoric yet as for richness in history, it is “as
deep as England”.
Pike too immense to stir, so immense and old
Its pike are imagined to be so big, deep and old,
they disquiet the speaker, who dared not cast
“past nightfall.”
23. But silently cast and fished
There is nobody else near him. He is so alone
and he is so close to such huge fish, his hair
frozen as if he was in fear.
For what might move, for what eye might move.
He waits there as if expecting a visitation from
the drowned or dream world of the ancient
dead.
24. Pike’s final stanza is about the outer scene with
the imagination of the speaker as the woods
begin to float and the sound of the owls and the
splashes on the pond grow frail on the ear in
contrast to the dream freed from the darkness
deeper than night’s darkness.
This deep dark dream, says the poet, “rose
slowly towards me, watching.”
25. Pike’s final two words, “me, watching” suggest
ambiguously: I watched or sensed the presence of
another consciousness as the immense, prehistoric
pike rose toward me, or it may mean as the immense
old pike from legendary depths corresponds to an
aspect of the mind of the speaker and to his genetic
past, the “me, watching” is the “I” or “eye” of the
poet’s identification with his fatal heritage and
survival as predator.
