Prayer Before Birth 

Analysis
Stanza One

I am not yet born; O hear me.

(…)
club-footed ghoul come near me.

The title of this poem, ‘Prayer Before Birth’,  puts allows the reader to imagine a woman close to
birth and might assume that this is her prayer. With the first line of this poem, which you can
read here, however, the speaker reveals that ‘Prayer Before Birth’ is to be from the point of
view of a newborn baby. This child’s first prayer upon entering the world is one that calls for
protection. The newborn asks for protection from the evils in the spiritual realm. The “club-footed
ghoul” is clearly mystical, if evil, being, whereas the “rat” and the “bat” could represent diseases
brought by those two creatures which are often associated with disease. In the opening stanza,
the newborn asks God to protect him from evil spirits and from disease.

Stanza Two

I am not yet born, console me.

(…)
on black racks rack me, in blood-baths roll me.

In this stanza, the newborn adds to his request for protection. The speaker reveals here, that
the newborn not only requests protection from evil spirits and disease, but also asks for
protection against the human race. He asks to be guarded from addiction and from war. The
speaker of Prayer Before Birth is clearly a grown person who has experienced these deadly
evils, but has chosen to write from the point of view of his newborn self. The effect of the voice
of a newborn baby is that it places knowledge of worldly evils into the mouth of an innocent
baby. This allows the reader to experience the magnitude of worldly evils.
 

Stanza Three

I am not yet born; provide me

(…)
in the back of my mind to guide me.

With this stanza, the child asks for provisions. This reveals that the author has knowledge of
poverty as one of the many worldly evils for which he asks for protection. He asks God to grant
him the ability to enjoy the sky, the birds, the grass, and the water. He also asks for wisdom.
This is what he means when he asks God for “a white light in the back of my mind to guide me”.

Stanza Four

I am not yet born; forgive me

(…)
hands, my death when they live me.

The author clearly has a dismal view of humanity, as this newborn baby asks for forgiveness
already, for those sins which he would commit. The author knows that no human being has the
power to avoid all sin, and therefore he uses the voice of the newborn to ask for forgiveness of
the sins which he would be sure to commit. He asks for forgiveness for his words, his thoughts,
his treason, and even for murder. The author seems to assume that this newborn will inevitably
commit all of these crimes. Thus, he asks for forgiveness.

Stanza Five

I am not yet born; rehearse me

In the parts I must play and the cues I must take when
(…)
me to doom and the beggar refuses
my gift and my children curse me.

In this stanza, the speaker asks for guidance from God. He knows there will be plenty of people
in his life who will fill his mind with ideas and opinions, but he asks God that He would guide him
with His own wisdom, to get him through life. Though “old men” would try to instruct him, he
desires to know the instruction of God Himself. Though he might face opposition to nature at
times, he asks God to help him know what to do when the “mountains frown[ed] at him”. He
asks God for strength to endure life even when “lovers laugh at” him and when “the beggar
refuses [his] gift. He even asks God to guide him when he comes to the day when his own
children would curse him. The author is clearly aware of all the hardships this newborn child
would face. Therefore, he gives the child a voice that calls out to God in pleas for guidance and
protection.

Stanza Six

I am not yet born; O hear me,

(…)
come near me.

With this stanza, the author reveals his knowledge of humankind. His speaker, the newborn,
asks that God would keep him far away from any human being who would give way to instinct
so much as to resemble a beast. He would not surround himself with those who cannot keep
themselves under control. He also asks that he would be kept far away from any man “who
thinks he is God”. These two different types of human beings represent two totally opposite
ends of the spectrum of humanity. While some give way to every temptation and live like
“beasts”, others would view themselves as  God himself. This speaker wants nothing to do with
either type of human being.

 
Stanza Seven

I am not yet born; O fill me

With strength against those who would freeze my
(…)
like water held in the
hands would spill me.

In this stanza, the speaker calls out to God for protection against what the world would want to
do to him. He does not want God to allow the people of the world to “freeze [his] humanity”. He
does not want to become “a cog in a machine”. With this stanza, the author reveals what he
thinks about war. When the baby asks God not to let him because “a thing with one face, a
thing…against all those who would dissipate my entirety”, it is clear that the author feels hatred
toward war. He knows that the other side wants to “dissipate” him, but he still does not want to
become the face at the other end. He does not want to become a “lethal automaton”, trained to
kill. He wants freedom from this kind of lifestyle.

Stanza Eight

Let them not make me a stone and let them not spill me.
Otherwise kill me.

In this final stanza, the speaker asks for protection against being killed. He does not want the
enemy to have his life in any way. Throughout ‘Prayer Before Birth’, the speaker has asked for
protection against every kind of evil. He longed to be kept pure from the evil so prevalent in the
world. Finally, at the end of ‘Prayer Before Birth’, he asks God for his very life. It is
rather ironic to imagine a newborn pleading with God for his life, when he has only just been
born. It is evident that the author uses a newborn baby as his speaker to cause the readers to
realize the fragility of life. This newborn baby has not experienced anything yet and is in a state
of innocence. Yet, the author makes the baby speak as though he were aware already of all of
the evil in the world. Thus, he asks God to protect him from evil beings and evil men. Likewise,
he asks God to keep him from becoming an evil man himself. The effect of these pleas is that
the readers can imagine the innocent little creature entering this world already doomed to face
all the evil that runs rampant on earth. Thus, the newborn, before he is even born, pleads with
God for his own protection from all such evil.

Louis Macneice Background

Louis Macneice, born in Belfast Ireland, lived from 1907 until 1963. Therefore, he would have
experienced World War I in his very early years, and World War II in his later years. This
particular poem was written during the second world war. It is easy to see the author’s point of
view in this poem. He writes from his own perspective, as a newborn baby. Of course, it quickly
becomes clear that the baby has a knowledge of one who has already lived. Therefore, ‘Prayer
Before Birth’ reads like a prayer that an old man wished he could have prayed as a newborn,
before the world got a hold of him with all of the evil therein. Of course, the readers, being fully
aware that no such prayer can come from an infant, realize that the author himself if speaking
his own thoughts through the infant child. Therefore, the author’s beliefs about evil, war, and the
world are revealed.

Analysis: Prayer Before Birth (Louis McNeice)

Louis MacNeice expresses a strong disgust towards the corrupted and evil world through Prayer before
Birth in which he takes the persona of an unborn child who prays to God.

The poem starts with a plea to be heard as the unborn child asks God to keep away the nocturnal
creatures, both real and imaginary away from him so that they might not cause him any harm. The
unborn child’s need to be comforted against people who with the help of deadly drugs and clever lies
will control him and dictate his actions is made clear in the second stanza. Wary of the influence man
will have on him; the unborn asks to be surrounded by nature, which man has still not been able to
corrupt. He prays for a clear conscience that can show him his way on the path of life. The unborn child
knows that he will do lots of evil things in this world under the influence of Man, and asks to be forgiven
beforehand. Everything that he will say, think or do will harm someone else and for that he asks
repentance. He then asks to be prepared beforehand for all the roles that he must play in life when the
entire world turns against him to the extent that even his children hate him and the beggar is indifferent
to him.

The sixth stanza adequately summarizes the whole poem. The unborn asks God to keep away such
people who are either as savage as animals or act tyrannously thinking they are as supreme as God
Himself. He then asks for the willpower to stand up against those who would try to destroy all that is
unique inside him and turn him into an insignificant part of a large machine. They would control him like
as if he were a small stone which the wind can blow here and there as it likes, or like as if he were the
water which a person tries to hold in his hands but ends up spilling everywhere. The poem ends with a
final ultimatum: The unborn pleas to be protected against those who would do such things to him or
asks to be killed instead of being sent into such a world.

Louis MacNeice uses a number of literary devices to make the stark truth behind the poem clear. The
most noticeable among these is the repetition: The phrase “I am not yet born” is repeated a t the start
of every stanza which makes it very clear that even though the child has not appeared in the world, he is
aware of the darkness which surrounds it, giving a dark and hopeless tone to the poem. Then the
abundant use of assonance juxtaposed with alliteration such as the assonance of “bat” and “rat” and the
alliteration of the letter B in “bloodsucking bat or rat”; or the repetition of the letter L in “lies lure” and
the assonance in “wise lies” in the phrase “wise lies lure me”; give an internal rhyme to the poem. Going
on to the third stanza one finds nature personified in several instances: “Trees to talk to me. Skies to
sing to me” Giving nature the qualities normally attributed to Man emphasizes the disgust that the
unborn child feels towards the world as he wants nothing to do with it and craves the company of
nature. However MacNeice contradicts himself by using the paradox in the next stanza “white waves call
me to folly” where white waves, metaphorically resembling purity are personified to be beckoning the
unborn towards evil. This thus proves that the intensity of corruption is such in the world that nothing,
not even nature, can remain pure for long. The last stanza is flowing in metaphors as the poet describes
how mankind will manipulate the actions and emotions of the child. He fears that he’ll become a “cog in
a machine” or be blown like “thistledown hither and thither” or be wasted like water held in hands.
These metaphorical comparisons emphasize the acute absence of control that the unborn can exercise
on his life.

Thus is Prayer Before Birth a potent monologue, with its cascading lines, each heavy in their use of
internal rhymes and repetition, assonance and alliteration, are insistent, driving, a crazed litany; they’re
powerful, yet wonderfully poignant.

Right from the title to the lethal ending, this poem casts a very harsh light on the evilness of society and
the corruption of mankind all over the world. The fact that MacNeice had to take up the persona of the
unborn child shows how little he thinks of Man. The world is such that he does not think that even a
young child; an infant, cannot remain unblemished from its cruelties. He was propelled to see it through
the eyes of an unborn child, one that is still within the safe confines of its mother’s womb, to have an
untainted point of view.

The poem is quite depressing and sad as it paints the world in such dark colors that no matter what the
unborn child does, once he is in the world, he is going to get affected in some manner or the other. If
the people can’t manipulate and control him with their lies and drugs and cage him within tall walls of
social refrain, making him do evil things to cause other people harm that he would not have otherwise
done; if he fights them and resists their dictation of his life, then they’ll reject him and he’ll become an
outcast. People of all classes: wise old men, cunning politicians, happy lovers, mean beggars and even
his own innocent children, will turn their backs on him and he’ll be left standing alone in the path of life.
If seen in a wider perspective, the unborn’s unwillingness to be controlled could also be a desperate
outcry against being categorized: everyone in this world is sorted, either into religions or class or color
or country. This is also a way of subtle manipulation that the world has a whole exercises on the
individual.

Thus he wants nothing to do with Man. He craves the company of nature, asking God to provide him
with all those things which aren’t anymore found in this world, things which remain pure and unaltered
by man’s influence, like the sky which cannot be conquered and the water which cannot be contained.

The strongest stanza of the poem, the seventh, is a personal favorite. With the poem being written at
the height of World War II,this stanza has a particular importance. As the unborn prays for strength
against those who would ‘dragoon him into a lethal automation’, the thought of a soldier immediately
comes to mind. A person who is not allowed to show any emotion, and is asked incessantly to kill on
behalf of his country, can only be considered a ‘thing’ without a ‘face’..A strong protest against
Totalitarianism, a type of government where every aspect of public and private lives is dictated by the
government, this poem and this stanza in particular, is a strong allegory against the world war. Yet
despite the definitive historical period of time that it was written in, McNeice makes his plea universal
by using the voice of an unborn child, innocent and frail, to convey his fear of the world, cruel and
tyrannous.

Dramatic in intensity, the poem makes a sweeping statement on the deplorable state of the world.
Living is a painful experience; being born is a terrifying one. The child’s plea is a representation of the
poet’s anguish, grief and fear in a world that has steadily metamorphosed into a hell. The poet paints a
picture of a world devoid of compassion, love and remorse through the haunting appeal of the unborn
infant. The poem reflects the poet’s utter dejection and hopelessness expressing the thought that the
world will not correct itself, but perpetuate its evils in an ever-ascending spiraling pattern of violence.