O Bitter Sprig! Confession Sprig!
O Bitter Sprig! Confession Sprig! - fact Summary
Included in Leaves of Grass
This brief, candid lyric stages a public confession: the speaker addresses a "bitter sprig" as a symbol of confession and admits to being sly, thievish, greedy, and morally flawed, insisting those traits persist. The poem moves from naming faults to a stark question about private, dark thoughts "in bed at night," alone or with another. Its tone is self-revealing and accountable rather than justificatory, a compact act of moral disclosure.
Read Complete AnalysesO BITTER sprig! Confession sprig! In the bouquet I give you place also—I bind you in, Proceeding no further till, humbled publicly, I give fair warning, once for all. I own that I have been sly, thievish, mean, a prevaricator, greedy, derelict, And I own that I remain so yet. What foul thought but I think it—or have in me the stuff out of which it is thought? What in darkness in bed at night, alone or with a companion?
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