What Natural Imagery is Used to Show the Development of the Mother-Child Relationship in ‘‘Morning Song’’?

Natural Imagery of Mother-Child Relationship in ‘‘Morning Song’’

The development of the mother-child relationship in ‘Morning Song’ has been displayed through natural imagery. The child’s natural aspect is emphasised at the beginning of stanza four. Its soft breath is compared to ‘moth-breath’ that flickers among the ‘flat’ pink roses. The mother wakes up in her bed room to listen to the ‘quivering’ notes of the child and a ‘far sea’ that the babble and murmur of the baby, in the nursery, ‘moves in my ear’. The far aspect of the sea, once again reinforces, the present ‘distance’ between the mother and the child in ‘natural’ as well as ‘spatial’ terms.

 

Further the comic picture of the mother can be seen in her shapelessness and mild vanity. She wears an anachronistic Victorian nigh gown with ‘floral’ motifs that ‘echo’ and ‘mirror’ the natural ‘motifs’. The child, behaving as ‘naturally’ as a cat swallows its milk in a manner as ‘clean as a cat’s’. These images of nature are mostly used metaphorically and symbolically against the background of human emotion, behaviour and actions that mark the development of mother-child relationship in the poem. In the fifth and sixth stanzas we see that the baby is clearly dependent on the mother to fulfill her needs, but she is also independent when she tries out her ‘handful of notes’. The last line closes the poem neatly; the child is growing already, making progress as she acquires language.