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Joy and Pain of Infants

Poetry has a way of magnifying imagery to create a deeper representation of what is truly meant to be pictured. In the poems, “Morning Song” and “Infant Sorrow”, Sylvia Plath and William Blake use imagery as a way to intensify their idea of infancy. Both poems explore the same idea of infancy, but have different interpretations on the beginning of a newborn life. Blake uses imagery to describe infancy as terrible and evil, while Plath describes it as beautiful and serene.

In her poem, Sylvia Plath uses imagery as a way to express the beauty and serenity of infancy. This type of imagery helps describe her perspective on infants by intensifying the beauty she sees. She describes the infant’s cries as “clear vowels” that “rise like balloons”, as a way to describe the serenity of the cries that are always seen as annoying. She uses  “our voices echo magnifying your arrival.” Plath shows the magnitude of having a new born baby and the joy it brings to a family. Unlike Blake’s poem, Plath’s interprets crying as joyful, and not bothering, resembling a song. She describes the baby crying, like playing the “notes” of a song. The imagery she conveys help understand the beauty she sees within infants.

In his poem, William Blake uses imagery as a way to describe the sorrow of having a new born baby. Blake uses imagery so that the sorrow in his poem is amplified and to make the pain much more noticeable. He describes infants as “Helpless, naked, piping loud”, by also describing their inner feelings as “bound and weary”. He utilizes imagery by describing more inner feelings and is able to represent infancy as painful. A time in some one’s life where everything is “dangerous” and the only place safe is with the mother or father. Unlike Plath’s poem, Blake uses imagery as way to show how painful a baby can be. The pain a delicate human being can take, and the protection they need from their “mother”.

Blake’s and Plath’s poems both utilize imagery as a way to deepen their true thoughts about infancy, by explaining more and more about the pain and sorrow it brings. Plath’s poem is a poem that revolves around the idea that infants bring joy. Blake’s poem is more centralized on the idea that they only cause pain. But, poems speak about the mother being the caretaker. Blake and Plath use imagery to convey the mother as the savior of the baby. In Plath’s poem, she is the one saves the infant from crying. For example, she says “One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral”. This description shows how the mother is characterized as the person who saves the baby. In Blake’s poem, she is also seen as the savior of the baby, by being the person the infant can trust. He describes the infant’s movements towards the mother as “to sulk upon my mother’s breast.” This imagery also conveys the mother as being the person who can save the infant from any misery, relieving any tension put on him.

Both poems convey the idea of infancy differently, to further explain the different interpretations of having a new child. They both include the idea of protection from their mother, and how infants rely on them to start their own lives. Overall, Plath sees infancy as a joyful experience where a baby is the most important and innocent thing in a person’s life. Blake sees infancy as a painful moment in life where infants cause terrible feeling to individuals. Not only those imagery magnify the representations of infancy in the poem, it shows the joy and pain of infants.