Comparing the poems 'Foghorns' and 'The Fog Horn.'

There are many links between these two similar poems. In the first few lines of both poems, personification is used to effectively describe the unpleasant sound of the fog horn. Clarke uses words such as 'moaning' and 'sad' to do this, showing the moon as being unhappy and distressed, which sounds to 'Catrin' like the low sound of the fog horn. In The Fog Horn, Williams uses the simile 'like a cow in pain' to initially describe the sound, which is also very distressing and unpleasant.

Both poems also use the idea of it being a lonely sound, as Williams describes it 'sounding its lonely rhythms' as Clarke compares it to 'the sad solitary voice of the moon,' which also implies that the source of the sound is far away from Catrin. In The Fog Horn, also uses the idea of it being far away in the second stanza, using phrases such as 'notes travel not only the sea's swell' and 'through deserted streets' -which tell us that this sound is so loud and deep that it can travel this long a distance- and the stanza finishes with 'pulsing through my window, reaching' which implies that it is rather hard to ignore. 

The poems often refer to the weather, Foghorns using the simile 'trading weather like rags and bones.' 'Rag and bone men' used to spend their days collecting scrap metal and calling out for them in long droning tones, setting a fairly depressing atmosphere. Whereas The Fog Horn uses the same idea of setting this atmosphere by using the phrase 'soup thick night,' which tells us that there is a thick fog about because it is an opaque mixture of ingredients, much like, if you were standing in the scene, you probably wouldn't be able to see through the mixture of weather being described. However, in the second stanza of the first poem, where the present and the past begin to merge -giving us the sense that this is a memory and present day- the fog begins to lift. This is insinuated by Clarke using 'silent heat, as haze/ became rain.'

When we come to the end of each poem, we realise that they both have a similar structure in the way that they begin by describing the distressful sound of the fog horns, describe the reactions to it and end rounding the poems off with repeating the idea of the unpleasant sound. Clarke uses personification and tells us that the moon 'hauls sea-rags through the streets,' showing that it is a strong and unusual sound that travels over a long distance. Williams instead uses the simile 'like hearing a dying animal,' which is an uncomfortable sound which again links back to the unpleasantness. This also makes the reader think that this noise foreshadows that the boats may bring unpleasant things with them.