Morning Song by Sylvia Plath

 Morning Song by Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath's "Morning Song" is a poignant poem that explores themes of motherhood, identity, and the complexities of love. It is about the transformative experience of becoming a mother.

'Morning Song' is a six-stanza, free-verse poem. Each stanza is an unrhymed tercet, for a total of 18 lines. There is no concrete rhyming scheme or meter.

The poem captures the feelings of a new mother as she reflects on her experiences and emotions. Rather than the mother instantly feeling a deep-rooted attachment to the newborn child, Plath depicts a mother who sees the child as more of an object than a person.

In the first line of ‘Morning Song’, the baby is compared to a “fat gold watch.” This is a very unusual description to connect to a child.

However, the whole poem is about time. The newborn has her own time. Of course, the implication here is that the watch must eventually wind down, and stop; her child will ultimately die. The baby is on her own life course now, and it is different from the life course of the mother.

In the second verse, she describes the child as a “New/ statue./ In a drafty museum”. A new statue that will receive its own stains, chips, and cracks. Mother, father, and midwife become mere “walls”, eclipsed by the new life that has just become the most important thing in the world.

In the next stanza, she clarifies it. “I’m no more your mother/ Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own/ Slow effacement at the wind’s hand”.

The poet is poignantly aware that her child is a separate entity, and she sees her own mortality reflected in that life.

She realizes that now when she is a mother, she is no more a girl. She describes how she stumbled from bed at the baby’s cry. Then she describes herself as “cow-heavy and floral/ In my Victorian nightgown”. This is an unglamorous, dowdy, and functional description. The mother herself is no more important, the sole purpose of her existence now being to nurture and preserve the child.

She then describes the child as “a cat”, something that is actually alive. This shows that the mother’s feelings are gradually developing for the child. She has yet not granted a human label for the child, yet, the child is alive, not merely a ‘watch’ or ‘statue’.

In the last stanza, the mother describes the child beginning its own, separate journey of life. It tries its “handful of notes”, the “clear vowels” rising “like balloons”. The mother acknowledges that the child has her own independent voice, will tell her own story, and build her own future. The mother cannot control it, the change that is destined to happen, but she can assist.

The poem suggests that the motherly love and devotion is a gradual process. The mother needs time to develop full maternal feelings.