The Full Text of “Ariel”
The Full Text of “Ariel”
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“Ariel” Introduction
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Sylvia Plath's "Ariel" was first published posthumously in a 1965 collection of the same title, which Plath had completed not long before her death in February 1963. In this free verse poem, a speaker sheds her inner burdens on a morning horseback ride, becoming one with the natural force she feels in her horse and the landscape. The speaker's liberating but dangerous ride has often been read as a metaphor for writing, female empowerment, and/or psychological instability—all subjects Plath understood intimately.
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“Ariel” Summary
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The speaker declares that everything is still and dark until a vast, hazy landscape of distant rocky hills appears.
The speaker talks to her horse, calling her a fierce and divine lioness and marveling at the way their two bodies work together, becoming one.
The ploughed fields rush past the speaker and her horse as they ride on. The brown curve of the earth mirrors the horse's neck, which the speaker feels she can't catch up with.
Wild blackberries capture the speaker's attention, as if they're throwing out hooks to catch her.
Their sweet, dark juice fills the speaker's mouth and reminds her of blood. She notices shadows.
Some new force intervenes and carries the speaker onwards, taking over every bit of her—from her legs to her hair to the skin that peels from the bottoms of her feet.
The speaker feels naked as Lady Godiva, stripping off unnecessary parts of herself like clothing. She casts aside lifeless hands and useless restrictions.
Liberated, she begins to evaporate like bubbles, until she becomes one with a field of wheat and the glitter of the ocean.
The cries of a child fade away inside a far-off wall. The speaker becomes a swift arrow, or dew evaporating into the air, united with a natural energy that throws her into the heart of the fiery red morning sun.
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“Ariel” Themes
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Liberation and Transcendence
The speaker of "Ariel" describes an early morning horse ride. While the speaker's journey begins as a highly physical experience, it gradually becomes less sensory and more spiritual—or even supernatural. Over the course of her ride, the speaker sheds all that holds her back and begins to feel that she's one with the exuberant natural force that she sees in the landscape and the horse. The title's allusion to the air-spirit Ariel, a character in Shakespeare’s The Tempest who is released from servitude at the end of the play, only strengthens the speaker’s point: fully and freely giving in to one's natural impulses is a transformative, liberating, and joyful experience.
The speaker initially experiences her morning ride in her body, connecting to the scene through physical experience. Grounding herself in this way prepares her to feel a deeper connection with the world around her. The speaker refers to horseback riding as "a pivot of heels and knees," highlighting the bodily movements of both herself and the horse. She then mentions "[t]he brown arc" of the horse's "neck," and notes that she "cannot catch" it any more than she can catch the landscape that the horse is "sister" to. At first, she's enjoying her physical experience, but she's still a little outside it. In other words, the powerful force that pervades the natural world is one step ahead of her, leading her on. When the speaker stops to taste berries, she becomes somewhat grounded, imagining that the berries have "blood" like her and feeling the thorns as "hooks" that anchor her to the physical world.
As the speaker continues her journey, her physical connection to her environment develops into a spiritual bond, and she becomes one with the impulses that drive her. When the speaker stops to eat berries, "something else / Hauls [her] through air." As she experiences physical connection through the berries, some deeper natural urge takes hold of the speaker’s body, carrying with it every bit of her, from her "hair" to the skin that "flakes from [her] heels."
The speaker describes this process as "unpeeling," and likens herself to Lady Godiva, who is known for riding naked on horseback. As the force of the natural world sweeps her up, the speaker discards the dead weight that burdens her: "dead hands, dead stringencies." "Hands" suggests the body and the physical world, while "stringencies" are the rigid guidelines that no longer restrain the speaker. She even lets go of the burdens of parenthood or of painful childhood memories as "The child’s cry / Melts in the wall."
As she rides on in the grip of this strange force, the speaker becomes less and less material, "foam[ing] to wheat, a glitter of seas" and resembling "the dew" that will evaporate under the morning sun. In other words, the speaker transcends her physical form and grows much closer to the natural force that compels her, becoming "one with the drive" forward, towards the horizon, that has been guiding her this whole time.
Shedding her restrictions and giving into natural impulses brings the speaker strength, freedom, and excitement—though these are not without their dangers. But in the end, this transcendent experience is deeply worthwhile. While the horse ride began with "Stasis in darkness"—a complete lack of light or movement—the speaker transforms into "the drive" towards the morning sun, gaining agency and awareness. Once the transformation is complete, the speaker likens herself to a fierce, piercing "arrow," taking on the strength and velocity of the natural force that drives her.
At the same time, the speaker hints that this is a dangerous process, referring to dew as "suicidal" as it flies into the fiery sun, the "cauldron of morning." The reader gets the sense that this kind of liberation brings with it the threat of destruction. Still, the surrounding references ("drive," "arrow," etc.) suggest that this process is exciting and empowering, albeit dangerous. In other words, the speaker’s horse ride illustrates the ecstatic transcendence that occurs when people cast aside their physical, human restrictions are cast aside and allow their uninhibited instincts to take over.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-31
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Ariel”
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Lines 1-3
Stasis in darkness. ...
... tor and distances.Before the poem even begins, the allusions in its title hint at a story of wild, transcendent freedom. Most famously, "Ariel" is the exuberant air-spirit from Shakespeare's The Tempest. But "Ariel" is also a Hebrew word meaning "lion of God"—and was the name of Sylvia Plath's horse! All these allusions prepare readers for what's to come: this will be a poem about a horseback ride that carries the speaker from physical pleasure to spiritual transcendence.
When the poem opens, the speaker is surrounded by the darkness of the early morning. Her first glimpses of the landscape around her reveal a “substanceless blue / Pour of tor and distances.” The craggy "tor[s]" (or rocky hills) seem to have become misty and immaterial, able to “pour” out in front of her. The imagery here suggests a blurry, dreamlike scene, and gives the impression that the speaker and the horse have moved from "stasis" to a rapid gallop.
But how do readers know the speaker is riding a horse? The short answer is that, at first, they don't! The speaker will only hint that she's on horseback over the course of the poem. Here at the beginning, it almost seems as if the speaker has been swept up on a gust of air—a true "Ariel." First appearing here as a kind of elemental spirit, the speaker's horse will come to symbolize the huge power of instinct and the natural world, a power that will eventually make rider, horse, and landscape into one being.
The poem opens with a series of sentence fragments. These short, broken lines create a sense of urgency, as if the speaker can't arrange her glimpses of the landscape into complete thoughts. And take a look at the enjambment here:
Then the substanceless blue
Pour of tor and distances.That seamless movement between “blue” and “Pour” mimics the overwhelming rush of images that the speaker describes.
But the first and last lines of this opening stanza are end-stopped, accentuating the natural pause at the end of a line. These end-stopped lines slow the reader down, allowing the imagery to sink in. And because the end-stopped lines create a pause after both “darkness” and “distances,” they accentuate the slant rhyme between the two words—and draw attention to an internal rhyme between "darkness" and "substanceless." Another internal rhyme in “Pour of tor" similarly mirrors the speaker's sense that the landscape is rushing past her in an overwhelming torrent.
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Lines 4-6
God’s lioness, ...
... heels and knees!— -
Lines 6-9
The furrow ...
... I cannot catch, -
Lines 10-14
Nigger-eye ...
... Shadows. -
Lines 15-18
Something else ...
... from my heels. -
Lines 19-21
White ...
... hands, dead stringencies. -
Lines 22-25
And now I ...
... in the wall. -
Lines 26-31
And I ...
... cauldron of morning.
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“Ariel” Symbols
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The Horse
The horse in this poem symbolizes the natural impulses that take hold of the speaker. The horse initially leads the speaker, who is in awe of its speed and power as they begin to "grow" into "one." But by the time the poem closes, the speaker has become "one with the drive" that the horse embodies. The fact that the speaker never directly tells the reader she's riding a horse emphasizes the horse's unearthliness, making it feel almost as if the speaker is riding the elements themselves.
The speaker claims that the horse is "sister to" the landscape, emphasizing the spiritual connection that all natural things share. But the horse also seems to be a supernatural force, not just an earthly one. She's named "Ariel," which is the name of a liberated air-spirit in Shakespeare's The Tempest. The speaker also calls her "God's lioness," a translation of "Ariel" from Hebrew. These allusions highlight the horse's almost magical power.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Line 4: “God’s lioness”
- Line 5: “How one we grow,”
- Lines 8-9: “The brown arc / Of the neck”
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Darkness and Light
Darkness in this poem symbolizes the limitations of the physical world (including its lack of insight), while light represents the ecstatic freedom of spirituality. The speaker begins her ride enveloped in darkness and sunk in the sensory experience of eating dark blackberries. Gradually, she transcends physical burdens and restrictions, becoming a liberated "White / Godiva" who rides towards the brilliant sun, the "cauldron of morning."
The speaker uses the n-word when describing the berries that entice her, comparing them to the eye of a Black person. Her use of a racist slur associates Blackness with physicality and the senses—especially when the speaker uses whiteness to signify transcendence and enlightenment. In fact, the speaker gains power by prevailing over darkness and becoming "White." As such, the darkness and light symbolism reinforces racist tropes and power dynamics—an unfortunately common feature of Plath’s poetry, and one which can also be seen in poems like "The Arrival of the Bee Box," written just a few weeks before "Ariel."
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Line 1: “Stasis in darkness.”
- Lines 10-14: “Nigger-eye / Berries cast dark / Hooks— / Black sweet blood mouthfuls, / Shadows”
- Lines 19-20: “White / Godiva”
- Lines 30-31: “the red / Eye, the cauldron of morning”
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“Ariel” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Allusion
This poem contains several allusions, including a few before the poem even begins! The title, “Ariel,” makes a literary, religious, and autobiographical reference all at once.
For starters, Plath herself owned a horse named Ariel. In fact, when Plath wrote this poem, poetry-writing and horseback riding were her two morning rituals. The allusion to her own horse might help clued-in readers to figure out what's happening here; after all, the speaker never directly tells readers that this is a poem about a horseback ride. Some readers might also interpret the speaker’s ecstatic, volatile transformation as a metaphor for the process of writing poetry.
But of course, Plath probably didn't expect readers to know the name of her horse. The name "Ariel" also alludes to something that readers are more likely to be familiar with: Shakespeare's great late play, The Tempest. In this play, the magician Prospero finds an air-spirit named Ariel imprisoned in a tree by an evil witch. Prospero releases Ariel on the condition that Ariel serve him for a year before going free (though as it happens, Prospero is reluctant to keep his promise at first, wanting to cling to Ariel's magic powers for his own purposes).
The poem's allusion to the play thus suggests both the liberated freedom of the air-spirit and the speaker's "imprisonment" in daily life and the material world at the beginning of the poem.
Finally, "Ariel" is a Hebrew name for Jerusalem—a name that literally translates to "Lion of God.” The speaker reinforces this allusion when she refers to the horse as “God’s lioness.” This allusion plays up the horse’s might and spiritual power, while subtly linking these qualities with femininity.
The poem’s final allusion appears when the speaker refers to herself as “White / Godiva. As the legend has it, Lady Godiva, a medieval noblewoman, repeatedly begged her husband to lift the oppressive taxes that he had imposed on his struggling people. He finally agreed to do so, but only if she rode through town on horseback—naked. After ordering everyone to stay inside and close their windows, Lady Godiva took her husband up on his offer.
This allusion resonates with the strength, power, and potential danger that the speaker feels when she sheds her physical limitations: much like Lady Godiva, she removes her "outer layers" to stand up for what she truly feels.
Where allusion appears in the poem:- Line 4: “God’s lioness”
- Lines 19-20: “White / Godiva, I unpeel—”
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Assonance
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Asyndeton
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Consonance
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End-Stopped Line
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Enjambment
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Imagery
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Metaphor
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Repetition
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"Ariel" 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.
- Stasis
- Substanceless
- Tor
- Furrow
- Nigger-eye
- Godiva
- Unpeel
- Stringencies
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(Location in poem: Line 1: “Stasis in darkness.”)
Stillness, unchangingness.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Ariel”
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Form
"Ariel" is a free verse poem, meaning that it doesn't use any specific rhyme scheme or meter. The poem's wild shape reflects the speaker's experience. The flow of her ideas here seems to be governed by impulse and creativity, rather than logic or reason (even if both kinds of force might actually have been involved in Plath's writing!).
The poem starts out with a series of ten tercets—stanzas containing three lines each. These three-line stanzas ground the poem a little, providing some relief from its unpredictability. However, this pattern breaks in the final stanza, which uses only one line.
This sudden change from the established form calls attention to the poem's conclusion—a conclusion that suggests both a gloriously violent ending and a new beginning. The final short, shocking stanza mirrors the speaker's own experience: it's as if she's shed so many burdens that she's almost evaporating into the sun, the brilliant, dangerous "cauldron of morning."
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Meter
This poem is written in free verse, which means it doesn't use a consistent meter. Instead, the poem's rhythms are constantly changing. Uneven line lengths and a combination of end-stopped and enjambed lines vary the poem's rhythm, mirroring the speaker's ever-evolving transformation as she goes for a wild early-morning horseback ride.
Overall, short lines and connective punctuation (like commas and dashes) make this poem feel fast-paced and energetic. The poem's speedy rhythms present the reader with a rapid, almost overwhelming stream of images and events. It's as if the audience can't catch up with the speaker any more than the speaker can "catch" the "neck" of the horse she rides. The poem's strange, impressionistic rhythms reflect the wild energy of the speaker's ride, and help readers to feel the speaker's joyful, dangerous abandon.
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Rhyme Scheme
While "Ariel" doesn't follow a rigid rhyme scheme, it uses plenty of rhyme! True rhymes, slant rhymes, and internal rhymes weave through the poem, making surprising connections across stanzas and reflecting the speaker's transformation.
For instance, look at the way rhymes and slant rhymes move through lines 14-18:
Black sweet blood mouthfuls,
Shadows.
Something elseHauls me through air—
Thighs, hair;
Flakes from my heels.Here, a perfect rhyme connects the "air" and the speaker's "hair," reflecting her sense that she's becoming one with the world around her. Meanwhile, a slant rhyme between "else" and "heels" creates a feeling of connection across differences. These sounds gesture at the strange transformation the speaker undergoes as she gets caught up in the "drive" of her ride; here, she's about to shake off the restrictions of her daily life, and her rhymes reflect her in-between state.
Back in line 3, the internal rhyme of "Pour of tor and distances" evokes the unified sweep of the landscape that the speaker will eventually merge with. Here, "pour" and "tor" make surprising bedfellows: "pour" is a liquid word to hitch to the stony, craggy "tor"! But the rocky, hilly landscape will indeed become a kind of liquid as the poem goes on, a substance that the speaker can immerse herself in and become one with.
Overall, then, patterns of rhyme and near-rhyme evoke the poem's biggest feeling: an exhilarating, dangerous oneness with nature.
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“Ariel” Speaker
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The speaker of this poem uses a first-person point of view, allowing the audience to see her horseback ride through her eyes.
When the ride begins, the speaker seems awestruck, enraptured with the strength and power of both the horse and the landscape. Her experience of the ride gradually becomes less sensory and more spiritual as the energy that courses through the natural world takes hold in her. The speaker undergoes a transformation that leaves her feeling liberated and empowered.
The speaker doesn't reveal much biographical information about herself, and never explicitly states her gender. However, her comparison of herself to "Godiva" (the legendary medieval woman who famously rode naked through town to protest her husband's unfair tax policy), and her sense that the horse she bonds so closely with is a "lioness" and a "sister," hint that she's a woman. What's more, Sylvia Plath herself had a horse named Ariel, and was known for writing radically autobiographical poetry. For all these reasons, we're referring to the speaker as "her" in this guide.
If this speaker is indeed a woman, the horse ride might be taken as a metaphor for the freedom, power, and risk that come with casting off the burden of sexist gender roles. Still, since the speaker is never truly gendered here, it might be fair to say that gender itself is one of the "dead stringencies" she casts off over the transformative course of her ride.
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“Ariel” Setting
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References to a "tor" (a colloquial British word for a hill or rocky outcropping) and to the "furrow" of ploughed farmlands suggest that this poem takes place in the British countryside.
At the beginning of the poem, it's so early in the morning that it's still dark out, and the speaker is overwhelmed by her surroundings, describing a torrential "Pour of tor and distances." But as she rides out on horseback, she begins to ground herself in the natural world, bonding with the horse she rides and eating "Black sweet blood mouthfuls" of wild blackberries. At last, the speaker even becomes the landscape, proclaiming "And now I / Foam to wheat, a glitter of seas." The landscape's grand beauty transforms the speaker, liberating and empowering her. At the end of the poem, she's even ready to fly into the sun.
As the speaker rides through this wild, beautiful landscape, she becomes almost one with it, emphasizing the transcendent and transformative power of the natural world.
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Literary and Historical Context of “Ariel”
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Literary Context
The American poet Sylvia Plath wrote "Ariel" in the fall of 1962, and published it in a collection of the same name. She died in February 1963, shortly after completing the Ariel manuscript. This collection, with its themes of liberation, gender, death, and rebirth, would make Plath famous after her death. But its legacy has gotten entangled with Plath’s personal struggles, including her mental illness and the breakdown of her marriage to fellow poet Ted Hughes.
The poems Plath wrote for Ariel echo her earlier work in their thematic concerns, natural imagery, and use of black/white symbolism. For instance, "Ariel" echoes a lot of imagery from Plath's 1960 poem "Blackberrying." And Plath's famous novel, The Bell Jar, is a clear precursor of this poem's feminist themes.
Immersed in literature since her childhood, Plath had many poetic influences. However, her longtime affinity for Shakespeare’s The Tempest—and especially the character of Ariel, the imprisoned air-spirit—has the most obvious and prominent influence here. Plath returned to The Tempest for inspiration many times over the course of her career; for instance, her poem "Full Fathom Five" quotes the play. Some of her other major influences were Dylan Thomas ("Fern Hill"), William Blake ("The Garden of Love"), and Robert Lowell ("Waking in the Blue").
Since her death, Plath has become one of the most beloved, respected, and influential poets of the 20th century.
Historical Context
"Ariel" was written during the early 1960s, a period characterized by change and instability. In fact, the Cuban Missile Crisis was taking place while "Ariel" was written, and the fear and volatility of that near-disaster resonates with this poem's images of destruction. Those images might also speak to Plath's personal struggles. The poem was written on Plath's final birthday, her 30th. Struggling with a painful marriage and long-term depression, she would commit suicide that same year.
"Ariel" also reflects the feminist movement of the 1960s. In these years, Second Wave Feminism was beginning to crystallize as women reacted against an oppressive return to traditional family values in the post-WWII 1950s. Plath's reference to Lady Godiva, who stands up for her beliefs against her husband's wishes, captures the growing feminist spirit of the time.
However, the poem's themes of liberation and empowerment are at odds with Plath's use of a racist slur in this poem. The Civil Rights movement was well underway when "Ariel" was written, and Plath was very politically engaged. However, her poetry frequently featured racist and anti-Semitic tropes and fetishization. Her shortsightedness reflects a wider white blindness to Black realities in the 1960s.
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More “Ariel” Resources
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External Resources
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The Life and Legend of Lady Godiva — Learn more about Lady Godiva, whose mythology "Ariel" references.
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Sylvia Plath Reads "Ariel" — Listen to the author read the poem aloud.
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The Life (and Afterlives) of Sylvia Plath — Read a detailed overview of the Plath's life, including a discussion of her career and legacy.
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Plath's Manuscript — Take a look at Plath's manuscript of "Ariel," which she gave to her friend and editor Al Alvarez.
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Plath On Air — Listen to a 1962 interview with the author from the British Council.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Sylvia Plath
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