Sylvia Plath wrote this villanelle in 1954 while she was a student at Smith College. It is often included in the biographical note to her novel, The Bell Jar, since it tackles the feelings of alienation that her protagonist, Esther Greenwood, dealt with. The biographical note in my edition tells me that Sylvia often composed villanelles while sitting in chemistry class.
This particular poem contains many germs of later Plath: religious reference brought to bear on personal life, the examination of a painful relationship, and the deft dance between the real world and the speaker's internal one. Of course, it's this poem's extreme narcissism, i.e.
that makes it closely resemble her later poems, especially those in her most famous work,
Ariel.
Full text of this poem is unavailable due to intellectual property laws.