Morning Song Summary & Analysis
by Sylvia Plath

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  • “Morning Song” Introduction

    • The American poet Sylvia Plath first published "Morning Song" in 1961, shortly after the birth of her first child. The poem paints a surreal, intimate, and tender portrait of a woman navigating motherhood for the first time. The speaker struggles to see her infant—who was so recently a part of her own body but who is now separate—as her own. At the same time, she feels a deep sense of devotion and responsibility to this utterly vulnerable being. The poem suggests that becoming a mother can be both deeply disorienting and sublime.

  • “Morning Song” Summary

    • The speaker addresses her new baby, saying that love set the child's life in motion, making it tick like a big rich watch. She remembers how the midwife smacked the bottoms of the baby's feet, and how she heard the baby's unrestrained cry becoming one of the essential parts of the universe.

      Now, the baby's family celebrates and wonders over the baby's arrival. The baby is like a new sculpture standing in an old museum. Its vulnerable nakedness casts a shadow over its parents' security. The family stands around stunned.

      The speaker says that she can hardly believe she's the baby's mother now: she feels about as much like a mother as a dissolving cloud feels like the mother of a mirror that reflects it.

      All night, the baby's moth-like breathing flutters around the roses in the wallpaper. The speaker wakes up to listen for the baby's breath; it sounds like a distant ocean.

      The instant the baby cries, the speaker hurries out of bed, feeling heavy as a cow in her old-fashioned nightgown. The baby's mouth opens up as naturally and cleanly as a cat's mouth. Meanwhile, the window gets brighter as the dawn comes. The baby makes a few little practice sounds, vowels that float up into the air like balloons.

  • “Morning Song” Themes

    • Theme Maternal Awe and Ambivalence

      Maternal Awe and Ambivalence

      “Morning Song” depicts a new mother’s conflicting, ambivalent emotions about motherhood. On the one hand, the speaker clearly feels some degree of shock at her new role and disconnection from her baby. On the other hand, she also shows signs of a burgeoning maternal instinct and desire to nurture her child. Motherhood, for this speaker, is a tender but surreal experience—something that opens up a new world of intimacy, yet is also intensely disorienting.

      It’s clear that the speaker is having some trouble adjusting to motherhood, and that she doesn’t quite feel the instantaneous bond new moms stereotypically share with their infants. Though she attributes the baby’s existence to “Love,” there's something cold, distant, and mechanical about how she describes her new child. She compares the baby to a “fat gold watch” and a “statue,” for example, as if the baby were a lifeless object rather than a person.

      These comparisons also imply that the speaker is an artist or a watchmaker (note that this latter occupation, in particular, is a common metaphor for God). In both cases, these creators exist independently of their creations. These metaphors thus suggest that even as the speaker finds her baby precious—a golden work of art—she feels essentially separate from the child.

      In fact, the speaker seems to feel disbelief at being a mother at all. She goes so far as to say that she’s not really the baby’s mother any more than a “cloud” is—a metaphor that evokes how surreal it feels for her to take on her new identity of “mother.” Adding to this sense of disorientation and disconnect, the adults "stand round blankly as walls,” as though looking at a museum exhibit. They are awe-struck and shell-shocked at this new life so quickly taking “its place among the elements.” The speaker again emphasizes the tension between the baby’s independence from and total dependence on her—the way the child so seamlessly establishes a presence in the speaker’s world, yet also seems delicate and fragile, like a museum piece.

      Yet despite the speaker’s apparent difficulty in adjusting to motherhood, she is also clearly devoted to her child. She describes listening all night to her child’s breathing, which she compares to that of a moth. She recognizes her baby’s vulnerability and responds the second she hears the child “cry,” jumping out of bed “cow-heavy” (i.e., swollen with milk). The baby’s “mouth opens,” ready for nourishment; despite the disconnect the speaker earlier describes, it’s clear that the speaker and the baby are literally, physically in sync.

      The speaker goes on to describe sitting with the baby until morning. As the stars fade, the baby makes incoherent sounds, which the speaker likens to balloons rising: a hopeful image that suggests the speaker’s growing tenderness toward her child. Though they're no more than babbled "vowels," the baby’s attempts to communicate are “clear” to the speaker—suggesting that mother and child are learning to speak a shared new language. Overall, then, the poem portrays an experience of new motherhood that is disorienting, awe-inspiring, and powerfully intimate all at once.

      Where this theme appears in the poem:
      • Lines 1-18
  • Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Morning Song”

    • Lines 1-3

      Love set you ...
      ... among the elements.

      The poem begins with the speaker addressing her new baby. Using a simile, she says that "Love set [her baby] going like a fat gold watch." In other words, the speaker compares her new child to a valuable object.

      On the one hand, this suggests that the speaker finds the baby exquisite. On the other hand, it hints at an underlying sense of disconnection: she sees the child as a perfectly made object, something to be admired, but isn't quite connecting to the baby emotionally, despite the "Love" that brought the baby into being. (Here, "Love" implies both the parents' emotional bond and the sex through which they conceived the baby.) She may also feel the weight of responsibility in caring for something so valuable. The juxtaposition, or contrast, between "Love" and a mechanical "watch" reveals the speaker's ambivalence toward her child and her own new role as a mother.

      The poem immediately makes use of consonance and assonance. In the first line alone, there is /l/, /t/, and /g/ consonance and /o/ assonance:

      Love set you going like a fat gold watch.

      These repeated sounds immediately give the poem a sense of rhythm and momentum, reinforced by the three stressed syllables at the end of this first line: "fat gold watch." These stressed beats evoke the emphatic way in which the baby's birth launches the speaker into motherhood.

      The speaker then describes the "midwife slapp[ing]" the baby's feet and the baby crying for the first time. She says that the baby's "bald cry / Took its place among the elements." This imagery suggests that the baby's crying immediately becomes a fundamental part of the speaker's universe; in other words, it suggests how important the baby is to her. Yet there's still a sense of disconnection and bewilderment in her description of the baby, as if it has come from somewhere other than her body.

    • Lines 4-6

      Our voices echo, ...
      ... blankly as walls.

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    • Lines 7-9

      I’m no more ...
      ... the wind’s hand.

    • Lines 10-12

      All night your ...
      ... in my ear.

    • Lines 13-15

      One cry, and ...
      ... The window square

    • Lines 16-18

      Whitens and swallows ...
      ... rise like balloons.

  • “Morning Song” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

    • Imagery

      The poem is filled with clear, vivid imagery. Much of this imagery is visual: the speaker compares her new baby to various inanimate objects, such as a "fat gold watch" in the first line, a "New statue" in line 4, and a "mirror" in line 8. These images suggest the speaker's sense of detachment from the baby: she sees the baby as her beautiful creation, but not yet as a real person she can connect with emotionally.

      She also describes herself in ways that highlight her sense of shock and uncertainty. In line 6, for example, she says that the adults in her hospital room "stand round blankly as walls." This image evokes a kind of helplessness, though it's not her own "blank[ness]" but the baby's "nakedness" that unsettles her. In other words, she's overwhelmed by the baby's complete vulnerability.

      There is also a lot of auditory imagery in this poem:

      • The baby enters the world with a "slap" from the midwife, prompting its "bald cry."
      • The "echo[ing]" voices of the speaker and other adults add drama to the baby's arrival.
      • The speaker "wake[s] to listen" for the baby's "moth-breath," which she then likens to a "far sea," suggesting a soothing rhythm.

      Finally, in the last stanza, the baby attempts its "handful of notes," as if it's a kind of untrained singer. The speaker also says that the baby's wordless "vowels rise like balloons." Notice that this simile connects the auditory and visual—as if the baby is a kind of poet, turning sound into image! Perhaps this attempt at communication is what finally bridges the distance between mother and child. In any case, the cheerful comparisons to song and balloons imply that the speaker is now responding more warmly to her baby.

      Where imagery appears in the poem:
      • Line 1
      • Lines 2-3
      • Lines 4-6
      • Lines 8-9
      • Lines 10-12
      • Lines 13-18
    • Simile

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      Where simile appears in the poem:
      • Line 1: “Love set you going like a fat gold watch.”
      • Line 6: “We stand round blankly as walls.”
      • Line 15: “Your mouth opens clean as a cat’s.”
      • Line 18: “The clear vowels rise like balloons.”
    • Metaphor

      Where metaphor appears in the poem:
      • Lines 4-6: “Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue. / In a drafty museum, your nakedness / Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls.”
      • Lines 7-9: “I’m no more your mother / Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow / Effacement at the wind’s hand.”
      • Lines 10-12: “All night your moth-breath / Flickers among the flat pink roses. I wake to listen: / A far sea moves in my ear.”
    • Consonance

      Where consonance appears in the poem:
      • Line 1: “Love,” “set,” “going,” “like,” “fat,” “gold,” “watch”
      • Line 2: “midwife,” “slapped,” “footsoles,” “bald”
      • Line 3: “Took,” “its,” “place,” “among,” “elements”
      • Line 4: “magnifying,” “New”
      • Line 5: “drafty,” “nakedness”
      • Line 6: “Shadows,” “safety,” “stand,” “round”
      • Line 7: “I’m ,” “no,” “more,” “your,” “mother”
      • Line 8: “cloud,” “distills,” “mirror,” “reflect,” “own,” “slow”
      • Line 9: “Effacement,” “wind’s,” “hand”
      • Line 10: “night,” “moth”
      • Line 11: “Flickers,” “among,” “pink,” “wake,” “listen”
      • Line 12: “sea,” “moves”
      • Line 13: “cry,” “stumble,” “bed,” “cow,” “floral”
      • Line 14: “Victorian,” “nightgown”
      • Line 15: “clean,” “cat’s,” “window,” “square”
      • Line 16: “Whitens,” “swallows,” “dull,” “stars,” “try”
      • Line 17: “handful,” “notes”
      • Line 18: “clear,” “vowels,” “rise,” “like,” “balloons”
    • Assonance

      Where assonance appears in the poem:
      • Line 1: “going,” “gold”
      • Line 2: “footsoles”
      • Line 4: “echo”
      • Line 6: “Shadows”
      • Line 7: “no,” “more,” “your”
      • Line 8: “own,” “slow”
      • Line 11: “Flickers,” “pink,” “listen”
      • Line 13: “floral”
      • Line 14: “Victorian”
    • Alliteration

      Where alliteration appears in the poem:
      • Line 1: “going,” “gold”
      • Line 4: “magnifying”
      • Line 5: “museum”
      • Line 7: “more,” “mother”
      • Line 8: “mirror”
      • Line 11: “Flickers,” “flat”
      • Line 12: “far”
      • Line 15: “clean,” “cat’s”
    • Enjambment

      Where enjambment appears in the poem:
      • Lines 2-3: “cry    / Took”
      • Lines 5-6: “nakedness / Shadows”
      • Lines 7-8: “mother / Than”
      • Lines 8-9: “slow / Effacement”
      • Lines 10-11: “moth-breath / Flickers”
      • Lines 13-14: “floral / In”
      • Lines 15-16: “square / Whitens”
      • Lines 16-17: “try / Your”
    • Juxtaposition

      Where juxtaposition appears in the poem:
      • Line 1: “Love set you going like a fat gold watch.”
      • Lines 10-12: “All night your moth-breath / Flickers among the flat pink roses. I wake to listen: / A far sea moves in my ear.”
    • Personification

      Where personification appears in the poem:
      • Lines 8-9: “the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow / Effacement at the wind’s hand.”
      • Lines 15-16: “The window square / Whitens and swallows its dull stars.”
  • “Morning Song” Vocabulary

    Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

    • Set you going
    • Midwife
    • Footsoles
    • Bald
    • The elements
    • Distills
    • Effacement
    • Moth-breath
    • Cow-heavy
    Set you going
    • (Location in poem: Line 1: “Love set you going like a fat gold watch”)

      Here, the speaker is saying that this child's life started with love—a line that might suggest a loving night of sex, or that pure love is somehow the source of life.

  • Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Morning Song”

    • Form

      The poem is made up of six tercets, or three-line stanzas. These orderly tercets contrast with the speaker's sense of being overwhelmed at new motherhood. It's almost as if she is trying to wrangle this bewildering, surreal experience into something that makes sense to her. Almost every stanza also ends in a period, which creates a contained feeling, as if the speaker is just trying to take things one day at a time.

      The small stanzas also give the poem a slow, gradual pace which mirrors the speaker's bit-by-bit acceptance of motherhood. The gradualness suggests that the speaker's bond with her baby is something that develops slowly, rather than something that happens all at once.

    • Meter

      "Morning Song" is written in free verse, so it doesn't use a standard pattern of meter or rhyme. This organic, flexible form lets the poem change shape to mirror the speaker's feelings.

      The length of line 8, for instance, drags the image out, and in doing so reflects what the line describes: a cloud, reflected in a mirror, gradually dissolving in the wind. Just a couple of lines later, when the speaker describes the baby's "moth-breath," the line is much shorter, evoking the baby's own tiny body and its light, fluttery breathing. See the contrast in lengths below:

      Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow
      [...]
      All night your moth-breath

      This freedom to move between much longer and shorter lines allows the poem to capture the speaker's feelings about new motherhood: her tenderness, shock, and amazement all come through in the shapes of her lines.

    • Rhyme Scheme

      The poem doesn't use any rhyme at all, with one exception: the subtle internal rhyme between "New" and "statue" in line 4. This rhyme mimics the "echo" mentioned in the same line. It also reinforces the relationship between the baby's "new[ness]" and the speaker's perception of her baby as a perfected work of art, something not meant to be touched but only marveled at. In other words, she's struggling to see this new being as an individual person rather than something that she's made, a created object.

      Aside from this one internal rhyme, though, the poem relies on other devices, such as consonance and assonance, for its musical effects. The lack of a rhyme scheme (and a meter) suggests that the speaker is rejecting elaborate artifice—avoiding a highly "poetic" style—as she candidly describes new motherhood.

  • “Morning Song” Speaker

    • The speaker of this poem is a new mother. Her relationship to the life-changing experience of having a baby is complex. She emphasizes that her child has entered the world because of "Love," not obligation or happenstance. Yet she struggles to connect with her baby, to see it as still being part of her now that it's separate from her body. The sudden arrival of this new generation also seems to reflect her own "Effacement": it's a reminder that she's no longer a child herself, and her life is passing.

      She compares the baby to a "gold watch," a "New statue," and a "mirror"—inanimate objects that reveal her alternating sense of wonder and bewilderment. In some ways, it seems she can't yet see the baby as a real person that lives outside her. At the same time, the baby's vulnerability reshapes her life: all she can do is "stand round" and watch it, or lie awake listening for its cry. As soon as it cries, she responds, despite feeling clumsy and ridiculous ("cow-heavy and floral / In my Victorian nightgown"). Though the need to care vigilantly for a new life—at the expense of her own comfort—may feel oppressive on one level, this vigilance helps her start to feel a true maternal bond.

  • “Morning Song” Setting

    • The first half of the poem doesn't have a fixed setting. The speaker describes the baby as a "New statue / In a drafty museum," but this museum is metaphorical, suggesting the speaker's awe of her new baby: to her, this little life seems like a breathtaking work of art.

      Beginning in line 10 ("All night your moth-breath"), however, the poem's setting is the speaker's home. The speaker describes listening to the baby breathing through the night, hearing its breath "Flicker[ing] among the flat pink roses" of the room's wallpaper—an image that suggests a peaceful nursery, decorated in soft colors for the new arrival. And when the speaker hears "a far sea" in her ear, it might be the literal sound of the sea in the distance or a metaphor for the comforting rise and fall of the baby's breathing.

      The last stanzas of the poem are also set, not just in a specific place, but a specific time: the "Morning" of the poem's title. When the speaker gets up to care for her baby, the nursery window "Whitens and swallows its dull stars" as the dawn arrives. This slow brightening might symbolize both the "dawn" of the baby's new life and the dawn of the speaker's new life as a mother.

  • Literary and Historical Context of “Morning Song”

      Literary Context

      "Morning Song" was first published in the Observer newspaper in 1961, and appeared later as part of Plath's posthumous collection Ariel and Other Poems. The impact of Ariel—and the popularity of Plath's only novel, The Bell Jar, which was published a month before her death—secured Plath's lasting legacy as an American writer.

      "Morning Song" showcases many of Plath's characteristic themes and qualities, like her vivid, energetic, image-driven language, and her penetrating and distinctly female perspective. Like "Morning Song," many later poems such as "Lady Lazarus" and "Ariel" use tercets, or three-line stanzas, and the poem's theme of motherhood and childbirth appear throughout the collection in poems like "Nick and the Candlestick" and "Child."

      The poem, which can be read as autobiographical, is often seen as part of Confessionalism: a revolutionary new style of writing that emerged in the 1950s and '60s. Confessionalist poets wanted to drop the barrier between themselves and the speaker of the poem and to examine the aspects of life which a conformist post-war society deemed too indelicate to talk about. Robert Lowell's "Skunk Hour," W.D. Snodgrass's "Heart's Needle," and Anne Sexton's "The Double Image" are all good examples of Confessionalist poetry.

      Inspired by these poets, Plath turned more and more to her own experiences of childhood, marriage, and motherhood in her poetry. "Morning Song," is just one of her honest, unsparing, intimate poems about the complexity and bewilderment of becoming a mother.

      Historical Context

      Sylvia Plath wrote "Morning Song" in 1961, shortly after the birth of her and Ted Hughes's first child, Frieda Hughes. Plath had a complicated relationship to motherhood (and her own relationship with her mother was far from harmonious). And all around her, she saw women giving up careers and personal freedoms to become housewives whose lives revolved entirely around their children and their homes.

      After World War II, this was par for the course: while some women were privileged enough to get an education, ultimately they were expected to give up their careers and settle down to raise a family. But Plath had dreamed of being a writer from a young age. She had no intention of giving up her own ambitions just to fulfill society's expectations of her.

      But as she got older and fell in love, she found herself desiring the very things that represented a lack of freedom to her: marriage, homemaking, children. The ambivalent undertones in "Morning Song" express the conflict Plath felt about her desires for both traditional motherhood and an untraditional career.

      This complexity is part of why her work resonated so strongly with second-wave feminists in the United States and Britain: women at this point in history saw their own experiences reflected in Plath's honest introspection.

  • More “Morning Song” Resources