Written in free verse, this poem describes the author walking in the dark, with a candle in hand, towards her sleeping infant, Nicholas (as referenced in the poem title). Infused with grief as well as hope, this was one of Plath’s last poems and was written when she had separated from her husband, Ted Hughes, and was living alone with her two children.

In an introduction written for a BBC broadcast of the poem in 1962, Plath described the poem as follows:

In this poem, a mother nurses her baby son by candelight and finds in him a beautify which, while it may not ward off the world’s ill, does redeem her share of it.