Ted Hughes said”that long after I am gone, as long as a copy of the poem exists, every time anyone reads it the fox will get up somewhere out of the darkness and come walking towards them.The poem appeared in Ted Hughes’s first collection, The Hawk in the Rain.

It is the most frequently anthologised of Hughes’ poems.

The midnight is chosen at the time as it is without any addition to the day, as blank as the poet’s mind itself. The time is unmarked and yet mature. The clock is alone as it is devoid of minutes and seconds, it being midnight. Further, the clock is alive as it is lonely. And there is something else that accompanies the loneliness of the clock-that is the poet’s creative conciousness. The metaphor for the poet’s fresh poetic perception is the “blank paper” where his fingers move.

Through the window I see no star:

Something more near

Though deeper within darkness

Is entering the loneliness.

Note that the poet cannot observe any star but can comprehend something that holds more promise for him. He cannot apprehend it through the senses but experience it through instinct..The image is first formless and can only be a professed feeling formless as the poetic vision of the poet itself, until it assumes concreteshape.…