Explain the different intentions that the poet is trying to convey in the poem, "Full Moon and Little Frieda.""Full Moon and Little Frieda"...

Ted Hughes' poem "Full Moon and Little Freida" is about
his young daughter (by Sylvia Plath).

The poem uses lovely
imagery to convey an evening, after dark, where father and child gaze at the landscape
and sky.

The first line speaks to us of the time of night;
using sensory details that appeal to the ear, Hughes recognizes the sounds of a dog's
bark and the clanking of a bucket.

Hughes speaks directly
to Freida, noting that she, though very small, is listening just as he is. The two lines
below end with periods: separate sentences, but possibly one thought. One wonders, does
he mean to list two things he observes, or is he comparing his listening child to the
delicate beauty of a gossamer web, waiting to be touched by the gentle dew, just as she
is listening and learning, which is, likewise, a lovely image for him to
behold?

And
you listening.

A spider’s web, tense for the dew’s
touch.

Hughes observes a
newly filled pail from milking, using a metaphor to describe that the sky's image in the
mirror, created by the milk's reflection. The "tremor" here may refer to the unsteady
hand holding the bucket, making the image move.

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A pail lifted, still and brimming –
mirror

To tempt a first star to a
tremor.

Hughes' imagery goes
on to describe the cows meandering home, their breath circling in the air around them;
it may be that the contents of a nearby pond or lake looks like blood around the
animals, and the "unspilled" milk may refer to the pail Hughes and his daughter carry as
they
watch.

Or
perhaps Hughes is saying that as the cows move in the darkness, they look like boulders
in a river of blood; "Balancing unspilled milk" simply may observe that the cows have
not yet been milked.

The turning point of the poem, and
perhaps the most important section in Hughes' imagery so far, occurs with the
lines:

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“Moon!” you cry suddenly, “Moon!
Moon!”

The moon has stepped back like an artist gazing
amazed at a work

That points at him
amazed.

Here the author notes
not only the child's delight at perceiving the moon in the sky, but with
personification, reports that the moon looks down at Freida, equally amazed by
her; Hughes uses a simile to describe the moon's
"behavior:"

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like an artist gazing amazed at a
work

The last line ("That
points at him amazed") gives us the sense of the M.C. Escher's picture entitled,
"Drawing Hands" (1948), where one cannot tell which hand starting drawing the other,
first.

As Freida is in awe of the moon, the moon is also in
awe of her, considering the child a work of art.

In this
poem, Hughes forever captures not just a moment shared with his daughter, but the beauty
and enchantment of nature as simply a reflection of the beauty and enchantment of his
child, awakening to the world around her.