Crossing The Water by Sylvia Plath

POEM : 
Posted on July 20, 2013 by russellboyle.com
Black lake, black boat, two black, cut-paper people.
Where do the black trees go that drink here?
Their shadows must cover Canada.

A little light is filtering from the water flowers.
Their leaves do not wish us to hurry:
They are round and flat and full of dark advice.

Cold worlds shake from the oar.
The spirit of blackness is in us, it is in the fishes.
A snag is lifting a valedictory, pale hand;

Stars open among the lilies.
Are you not blinded by such expressionless sirens?


Analysis : 




This is the first poem in the poetry book of the same name Crossing the Water being a 1971 posthumous collection of poetry by Sylvia Plath that Ted Hughes prepared for publication. The collection was published in the UK by Faber & Faber in 1975.

S1 – it seems a dark night journey over the water … everything is black … and there is dark mystery in the personification of the numerous trees close to the water … the setting sounds like New Hampshire, America, perhaps after she was married and there with TH

S2 – the water flowers sound like lilies and the white picks up any light … filtering suggestive that the water is processing and giving up something via the lilies … thick leaves are preventing the boat from easy movement … and again darkness prevails in their advice … what are the water lilies saying? – don’t cross or go slow … more mystery in the personification of the flowers – are they trying to drag the boat down to a dark peril?

S3 – cold worlds that shake from the oar … the water is cold and another world, the mysterious world that is below … and the spirit of blackness is in us as though the black environment now enters us or gives recognition to our nature too … and as the boat passes through the mass of lilies the passing message is personified as a pale hand trying to catch the boat … like a snag catching hold of a fisherman’s line, it is always difficult to free a snagged line most times you lose hook and sinker

S4 – ‘stars open among the lilies’ – my first thought went to a patch of clear water with reflections from the sky – but perhaps more likely reference to the flowers themselves … in the next line their effect is so dramatic to be blinded – at least SP is blinded and this is after all the dark, dark, dark and then they are referred to as sirens for their beauty, imposing her femineity … clearly this sighting had a dramatic effect on SP … and in the last line there is a counter-play of silence as if SP and the audience is mummified

This is not the only SP poem which contrasts blackness with a sudden luminous spark of ‘heaven’ – consider, for example, ‘Black Rook in Rainy Weather’ which also shows the extremes in the persona of SP.

Unfortunately the spirit of blackness haunted SP all of her life … in the poem the snag lifted and the boat moved on through the mass of lilies. Sadly, we all know that it was only a temporary reprieve and that her journey was cut short by those unsinkable demons below the surface.


This is the silence of astounded souls.