Love set you going like a fat gold watch.
The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry
Took its place among the elements.

Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue.
In a drafty museum, your nakedness
Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls.

I’m no more your mother
Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow
Effacement at the wind’s hand.

All night your moth-breath
Flickers among the flat pink roses. I wake to listen:
A far sea moves in my ear.

One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral
In my Victorian nightgown.
Your mouth opens clean as a cat’s. The window square

Whitens and swallows its dull stars. And now you try
Your handful of notes;
The clear vowels rise like balloons.

Analysis, meaning and summary of Sylvia Plath's poem Morning Song

21 Comments

  1. Abi Kiru says:

    We cant blame the poet as selfish. If sylvia wrote this as personal poem it clearly shows the colors of bipolar disorder mother. It means sometime much pleasure with positive stuffs sometome low feelings with negative vibes. If yes what is the wrong on sylvia. As she clinically suffered by mental disorder. Even she did not escape to praise her child.
    She also a great mother that is why this poem … !

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