What is the tone of Morning Song by Sylvia Plath?

For the most part, the tone of Sylvia Plath's poem "Morning Song" is one of emotional detachment or estrangement. Her nonmaternal attitude to her newborn child, describing it in the first stanza as an inanimate object, "a fat gold watch," has a surreal, disorienting effect on the reader.

Towards the end of the poem, however, the tone becomes more affectionate, or at least less disinterested, with the poet wondering with a musical appreciation at the "handful of notes," rising "like balloons" from the baby. This is far removed from her earlier assessment of the baby's cries as "bald" and uttered from "moth-breath."