Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

"The Bull of Bendylaw" by Sylvia Plath, a poem infused with mythological undertones and vivid imagery, conveys the inevitable force of nature, embodied in the figure of a black bull, clashing with the constructs of human order and authority. In this striking narrative, Plath presents a world where the natural, symbolized by the bull and the sea, disrupts the complacency of human dominion, personified by a king and queen, their lords and ladies, and their well-kept gardens.

The poem begins with an arresting opening line, "The black bull bellowed before the sea." The black bull serves as an emissary of nature's wildness and capriciousness, its appearance leading the sea, "till that day orderly," to heave "up against Bendylaw," presumably the king's territory. Plath sets the stage for a confrontation between the primal forces of nature and the human world's desire for control and order.

In this archetypical human world, the "queen in the mulberry arbor stared / Stiff as a queen on a playing card," and the "king fingered his beard." These lines offer a caricature of monarchical passivity and vanity. They are symbols of human civilization, with all its artificiality, now facing an elemental challenge.

The sea, metaphorically transformed by the presence of the bull into a "bull-snouted sea that wouldn't stay put," comes charging at the garden gate. It's a striking image that encapsulates the defiance of natural forces against human barriers. Lords and ladies, the courtly elite, run "along box-lined walks in the florid sun / Toward the rowdy bellow and back again," a description imbued with a sense of ridiculousness and futile human activity. Plath seems to highlight the absurdity of human pretensions in the face of overwhelming natural forces.

As the "great bronze gate began to crack," the futility of human structures against the unruly force of nature becomes evident. The sea, now described as "Pellmell, blueblack," floods the orderly, "tidy acre" of the king. The image of the sea breaking through "at every crack" serves as a stark contrast to the initial sense of controlled, royal atmosphere. Nature's indomitable forces defy the chain of daisies and the wisdom of "any learned man," further underscoring the limitations of human knowledge and technology when pitted against the raw might of the natural world.

The poem concludes with an emphatic reversal: "O the king's tidy acre is under the sea, / And the royal rose in the bull's belly, / And the bull on the king's highway." Nature has usurped human civilization; the sea has flooded the king's land, the royal rose is consumed by the bull, and the bull now roams where once only the authority of the king prevailed.

"The Bull of Bendylaw" serves as a poetic allegory for the tension between human civilization and the primal forces of nature, as well as a meditation on the ultimate fragility of human-made structures and institutions. Plath's vivid imagery, combined with the cadence of her lines, creates an evocative tableau that not only captures but also critiques the human delusion of control over the elemental aspects of the world. It is a poignant reminder of the constant, often destructive, push and pull between our ambitions and the earth's unyielding realities.

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