"A Memory" describes a farmer shearing a sheep. The speaker admires the farmer's combination of strength, tenderness, and dexterity as he wrestles with the impatient animal. The poem presents this traditional labor in a realistic light, portraying it as both grueling and oddly beautiful. Hughes composed "A Memory" while living and working on a farm he bought in Devon in the west of England. He wrote it specifically about his father-in-law, Jack Orchard, who was a farmer all his life. The poem first appeared in Moortown Diary, Hughes's collection of versified diary entries about farm life, in 1973.

• Read the full text of “A Memory”

• “A Memory” Summary

• “A Memory” Themes

  • 

    The Difficulty and Beauty of Traditional Labor

    Where this theme appears in the poem:

    • Lines 1-24
  • 

    Humanity vs. Nature

    Where this theme appears in the poem:

    • Lines 1-21

• Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “A Memory”

  • Lines 1-5

    Your bony white ...
    ... sweating and freezing—

    

    

    

    

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  • Lines 6-9

    Flame-crimson face, drum-guttural ...
    ... adjustments of position

    

    

    

    

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  • Lines 10-13

    The attached cigarette, ...
    ... of the animal

    

    

    

    

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  • Lines 14-19

    You were like ...
    ... your cigarette comfort

    

    

    

    

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  • Lines 20-24

    Till you stretched ...
    ... another at it

    

    

    

    

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• “A Memory” Symbols

  • 

    Cigarettes

    Where this symbol appears in the poem:

    • Lines 10-11: “The attached cigarette, bent at its glow / Preserving its pride of ash”
    • Line 19: “your cigarette comfort”
    • Lines 22-24: “Then nipped the bud of stub from your lips / And with glove-huge, grease-glistening carefulness / Lit another at it”

• “A Memory” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

  • Alliteration

    

    

    

    

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    Where alliteration appears in the poem:

    • Line 1: “bony,” “bowed back”
    • Line 6: “Flame-crimson face”
    • Line 11: “Preserving,” “pride”
    • Line 12: “suddenly savage, suddenly”
    • Line 21: “Letting,” “leap”
    • Line 23: “glove-huge, grease-glistening”

  • Assonance

    

    

    

    

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    Where assonance appears in the poem:

    • Line 5: “cave-dark barn”
    • Line 6: “Flame-crimson face,” “drum-guttural”
    • Line 8: “oversize, overweight”
    • Line 18: “dome”
    • Line 19: “Over”
    • Line 20: “stretched erect”
    • Line 21: “Letting,” “peeled sheep leap free”
    • Line 22: “bud,” “stub”
    • Line 23: “grease-glistening”
    • Line 24: “Lit,” “it”

  • Metaphor

    

    

    

    

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    Where metaphor appears in the poem:

    • Line 5: “In the cave-dark barn”
    • Line 6: “drum-guttural African curses”
    • Line 11: “its pride of ash”
    • Line 17: “Inching by main strength into the solid hour,”

  • Simile

    

    

    

    

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    Where simile appears in the poem:

    • Lines 1-2: “Your bony white bowed back, in a singlet, / Powerful as a horse,”
    • Lines 7-9: “As you bundled the sheep  / Like tying some oversize, overweight, spilling bale / Through its adjustments of position”
    • Lines 14-17: “You were like a collier, a face-worker / In a dark hole of obstacle / Heedless of your own surfaces / Inching by main strength into the solid hour,”

  • Repetition

    

    

    

    

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    Where repetition appears in the poem:

    • Line 1: “bowed”
    • Line 3: “Bowed”
    • Line 12: “suddenly,” “suddenly”
    • Line 18: “bowed”

• “A Memory” Vocabulary

  Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

  • Singlet
  • Shearing
  • Draught
  • The East
  • Flame-crimson
  • Drum-guttural African curses
  • Bale
  • Masterings
  • Collier, a face-worker
  • Heedless of your own surfaces
  • Main strength
  • The solid hour
  • Arch-wrinkled
  • Weathered dome
  • The bud of stub
  • (Location in poem: Line 1: “Your bony white bowed back, in a singlet,”)

• Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “A Memory”

  • Form

  • Meter

  • Rhyme Scheme

• “A Memory” Speaker

• “A Memory” Setting

• Literary and Historical Context of “A Memory”

• More “A Memory” Resources

  • External Resources

    • Moortown Diary — Read more about the book in which this poem appeared. 

    • Ted Hughes's Life and Work — A biography of the poet and additional poems via the Poetry Foundation. 

    • British Library Archives — Additional resources on Hughes's work from the British Library.

    • Hughes Remembered — Read the 1998 New York Times obituary of Hughes, which discusses his controversial life and career.

    • Agriculture and Devon — Learn more about the area of England in which the poem is set (and its farming culture). 

  • LitCharts on Other Poems by Ted Hughes

    • Anniversary

    • A Picture of Otto

    • Bayonet Charge

    • Cat and Mouse

    • Football at Slack

    • Fulbright Scholars

    • Full Moon and Little Frieda

    • Hawk Roosting

    • Relic

    • Roe-Deer

    • Snowdrop

    • Telegraph Wires

    • The Harvest Moon

    • The Horses

    • The Jaguar

    • The Other

    • The Shot

    • The Thought Fox

    • Wind

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