the first line It means her world is really black full of sadness and without hope The trees and their shadows seem huge The shadows even cover Canada A little light appears through the water flowers It is like little hope The leaves of these flowers do not want the travelers to hurry They give them dark advice It means the poet s mind is full of bad advice or warnings The beautiful water flowers and little light do not give her any real hope or comfort The spirit of blackness is inside everything She writes The spirit of blackness is in us it is in the fishes It is in the poet in the fish in the environment It means everything is sad and scary for the speaker A dead tree branch sticks out of the water like a pale hand as if to say goodbye This scene is full of fear This is just like the speaker's mind which is full of fear In the end stars appear and beautiful lilies float But they offer no comfort The lilies are compared to expressionless sirens In Greek myth sirens look beautiful but they lure sailors into the sea to be drowned So the journey ends in a world of danger and silence We know that Sylvia Plath suffered from depression and she was not happy She tragically died by suicide in So Crossing the Water seems to be a portrayal of her troubled mind which was full of sadness isolation uncertainty and fear of death Form Meter Rhyme Scheme Plath wrote this poem in four tercets Tercets are three-line stanzas So the poem has lines It is written in free verse so there is no fixed rhythm scheme or meter Though the poem has no rhyme scheme it creates rhythm through literary devices like repetition and alliteration Use of Imagery and Literary Devices Plath uses strong visual imagery to create the haunting atmosphere of the lake Everything is black there the lake the boat the people and even the trees In the first stanza Plath uses repetition She uses the word black to show that the speaker s world is really black full of sadness and without hope We also find personification They are round and flat and full of dark advice Here Plath personifies the leaves of the water flowers She describes them as if they are giving bad advice or warnings Language and Tone Plath uses simple but highly visual language in the poem She uses a dark fearful and mysterious tone It is as if the spirit of blackness is also in the tone of the poem With her language and tone she successfully creates a dark and surreal atmosphere on the lake In conclusion Crossing the Water is a powerful poem It gives us an insight into the poet s mind through a boat journey on a dark lake Plath s wonderful poetic technique and the dark atmosphere still surprise the readers