Sonnet: to Time
Today we move in jade and cease with garnet Amid the ticking jeweled clocks that mark Our years. Death comes in a casual steel car, yet We vaunt our days in neon and scorn the dark. But outside the diabolic steel of this Most plastic-windowed city, I can hear The lone wind raving in the gutter, his Voice crying exclusion in my ear. So cry for the pagan girl left picking olives Beside a sunblue sea, and mourn the flagon Raised to toast a thousand kings, for all gives Sorrow; weep for the legendary dragon. Time is a great machine of iron bars That drains eternally the milk of stars.
Sonnet: to Time - meaning Summary
Time as Relentless Machine
Plath’s sonnet confronts time and mortality, contrasting glossy modern life with older, mournful images. The poem moves from jeweled clocks and a casual steel car to an outside wind and ancient scenes of a pagan girl and a dragon. These shifts underline a sense of exclusion and universal sorrow. Time is finally personified as a harsh, iron machine that relentlessly drains even the stars, collapsing glamour into loss.
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