The Thought-Fox Literary Elements

first person speaker

six stanzas of four lines each, no set rhyme scheme

"Cold, delicately as the dark snow/ A fox's nose touches twig, leaf;"
The speaker compares the manner in which the fox inspects a tree branch to the "delicate" snow.

"...an eye/...Coming about its own business,/ Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox/ It enters the dark hole of the head."
The speaker compares the fox, specifically the fox's eye, to the sudden shock of an idea.

"I imagine this midnight moment's forest:"
Repetition of "m" sounds

"Something else is alive/ Beside the clock's loneliness"
Repetition of "s" sounds

"Though deeper within darkness"
Repetition of "d" sounds

"Sets neat prints into the snow"
Repetition of "s" and "t" sounds

"Of a body that is bold to come"
Repetition of "o," "b," and "d" sounds

"Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox"
Repetition of "t" and "s" sounds

"The Thought Fox," ironically, is inspired by the speaker's lack of inspiration.

modern poetry, ars poetica

a home near the forest

pensive, lonely

The speaker is the protagonist, writer's block is the antagonist

The major conflict lies between the speaker and himself, or the absence of inspiration.

The poem's climax occurs in lines 25 and 26, when an idea strikes the speaker with "a sudden sharp hot stink of fox."

In the first two stanzas, the speaker foreshadows the introduction of a significant figure or image when he feels that "something else is alive" and "more near" on the dark, lonely night.

Line 5, when the speaker mentions that he "see[s] no star" through his window, could be an allusion to poems and poetic sequences that begin with an invocation, or a call to a poetic muse for inspiration, often allegorized as a star. An example of this could be Philip Sidney's Astrophil and Stella. The poem's setting also echoes the work of Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, whose speakers often find themselves alone in the middle of the night, inspired by a dream or late-night idea to stay up and write.

"Two eyes serve a movement, that now/ And again, and now, and now/ Sets neat prints into the snow..."
"Two eyes" functions as a metonymy for the fox.

"...an eye,/ A widening deepening greenness,/ Brilliantly, concentratedly"
The speaker zooms in on the fox's eye, exaggerating its image, to emphasize the poetic potency contained in this symbol of vision, perspective, and inspiration.

"...the clock ticks"
The sound of the clock's tick contrasts the poem's silence and emphasizes the speaker's loneliness.