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Sylvia Plath - Virgin In A Tree
Work rating: Medium

How this tart fable instructs
And mocks! Here`s the parody of that moral mousetrap
Set in the proverbs stitched on samplers 
Approving chased girls who get them to a tree
And put on bark`s nun-black 

Habit which deflects
All amorous arrows. For to sheathe the virgin shape
In a scabbard of wood baffles pursuers, 
Whether goat-thighed or god-haloed. Ever since that first Daphne
Switched her incomparable back 

For a bay-tree hide, respect`s
Twined to her hard limbs like ivy: the puritan lip 
Cries: `Celebrate Syrinx whose demurs
Won her the frog-colored skin, pale pith and watery
Bed of a reed. Look: 

Pine-needle armor protects 
Pitys from Pan`s assault! And though age drop 
Their leafy crowns, their fame soars,
Eclipsing Eva, Cleo and Helen of Troy: 
For which of those would speak

For a fashion that constricts
White bodies in a wooden girdle, root to top
Unfaced, unformed, the nipple-flowers
Shrouded to suckle darkness? Only they
Who keep cool and holy make

A sanctum to attract
Green virgins, consecrating limb and lip
To chastity`s service: like prophets, like preachers,
They descant on the serene and seraphic beauty
Of virgins for virginity`s sake.` 

Be certain some such pact`s
Been struck to keep all glory in the grip
Of ugly spinsters and barren sirs
As you etch on the inner window of your eye
This virgin on her rack: 

She, ripe and unplucked, `s
Lain splayed too long in the tortuous boughs: overripe
Now, dour-faced, her fingers
Stiff as twigs, her body woodenly
Askew, she`ll ache and wake

Though doomsday bud. Neglect`s
Given her lips that lemon-tasting droop:
Untongued, all beauty`s bright juice sours.
Tree-twist will ape this gross anatomy
Till irony`s bough break.
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