Rapunzel — Summary

Adelaide Crapsey’s poem gives voice to Rapunzel in her tower, turning the fairy tale into a quiet, aching monologue. The speaker spends her days in a numbing cycle of brushing her hair and waiting, her golden strands both her only treasure and her prison. The repeated question “Ah, who is there?” suggests an desperate hope that someone—anyone—will climb up, but the answer never seems to come. By the third stanza, the mention of “she left at dawn” and the startling “I am blind / In the tangle of my long hair” hints that the witch has been there, perhaps the sole visitor, and the speaker’s condition is more desperate: she is literally or emotionally blinded, ensnared by her own beauty. The poem’s short, fractured lines and echoing refrains create a mood of suspended loneliness, as if time has stalled in that isolated room. It’s a stark portrait of waiting for rescue from a life that has worn itself into monotonous despair.