• Ted Hughes (1930-1998) was born in Yorkshire, in the North of England, and grew up in the countryside. After serving in the RAF for two years, he won a scholarship to Cambridge University where he studied Archaeology and Anthropology. The themes of the countryside, human history and mythology therefore already deeply influenced his imagination by the time he started writing poetry as a student.

• He made his name as a poet in the late 1950s and 1960s and also wrote many well-known children's books including The Iron Man (which was filmed as the Iron Giant). It is for his poetry that he remains important. He was poet laureate from 1984 until his death from cancer in 1998.

• The poem itself looks at the scene of a Bayonet Charge, common in World War 1.

Suddenly he awoke and was running – raw

In raw-seamed hot khaki, his sweat heavy,

Stumbling across a field of clods towards a green hedge

That dazzled with rifle fire, hearing

Bullets smacking the belly out of the air –

He lugged a rifle numb as a smashed arm;

The patriotic tear that had brimmed in his eye

Sweating like molten iron from the centre of his chest, –

In bewilderment then he almost stopped –

In what cold clockwork of the stars and the nations

Was he the hand pointing that second? He was running

Like a man who has jumped up in the dark and runs

Listening between his footfalls for the reason

Of his still running, and his foot hung like

Statuary in mid-stride. Then the shot-slashed furrows

Threw up a yellow hare that rolled like a flame

And crawled in a threshing circle, its mouth wide

Open silent, its eyes standing out.

He plunged past with his bayonet toward the green hedge,

King, honour, human dignity, etcetera

Dropped like luxuries in a yelling alarm

To get out of that blue crackling air

His terror’s touchy dynamite.