The Moon And The Yew Tree Analysis

This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary
The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue.
The grasses unload their griefs on my feet as if I were God
Prickling my ankles and murmuring of their humility
Fumy, spiritous mists inhabit this place.
Separated from my house by a row of headstones.
I simply cannot see where there is to get to.

The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right,
White as a knuckle and terribly upset.
It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet
With the O-gape of complete despair. I live here.
Twice on Sunday, the bells startle the sky ----
Eight great tongues affirming the Resurrection
At the end, they soberly bong out their names.

The yew tree points up, it has a Gothic shape.
The eyes lift after it and find the moon.
The moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary.
Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls.
How I would like to believe in tenderness ----
The face of the effigy, gentled by candles,
Bending, on me in particular, its mild eyes.

I have fallen a long way. Clouds are flowering
Blue and mystical over the face of the stars
Inside the church, the saints will all be blue,
Floating on their delicate feet over the cold pews,
Their hands and faces stiff with holiness.
The moon sees nothing of this. She is bald and wild.
And the message of the yew tree is blackness -- blackness and silence

.: :.

Sylvia Plath is looking for a way back to herself, to life - she is suicidal "Separated from my house by a row of headstones". She seeks rescue and hope in religion "How I would like to believe in tenderness ----" but the saints are only cold delicate statues "stiff with holiness" and she finds no help. She seeks rescue through nature but nature treats her as if she were God and holds the answers to life's grief - she has no answers. She seeks rescue in the moon but the moon only reflects back her own wild and frightening despair and she is tormented by it. Separated from herself by thoughts of suicide she desperately looks to nature, the Holy Mother and church, and the sky - but all she ever sees are frightening reflections of herself, darkness and death.

| Posted on 2009-03-10 | by a guest