About Louis Macneice :-
Louis Macneice was born in Belfast, Ireland, and 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 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. The reader, being fully aware that no such prayer can come from an infant, realize that the author himself is speaking his own thoughts through the infant child. Therefore, the author’s beliefs about evil, war, and the world are revealed.
Summary of the Poem :-
'Prayer Before Birth' is a poem that is relevant still today and grows more powerful as the world becomes a more dangerous place. It is a dramatic monologue but has the pattern of an incantation and the spirit of a prayer.
The speaker is the unborn child inside the mother's womb, thinking of the future as it is about to be born. This unusual perspective gives the poem a highly charged aura which intensifies as the stanzas progress.
Here is a baby who is already fearful, who intuitively knows that the world it is about to enter surely isn't anywhere close to Paradise.
The child pleas for protection and prays that it won't be corrupted once it emerges onto planet earth. This is unsettling reading for any adult, even with only an iota of sensitivity, the potential horrors this little human being faces beggars belief. Yet, the poem is firmly rooted in grim reality.
Louis MacNeice's poem captures the fears and anxieties perfectly because the voice is that of the baby not yet out into the war-torn air. And with each stanza comes the build-up of understanding for the reader - these are also the fears of the adults, the parents and the generations that allowed such an environment to exist in the first place.
Themes :-
Throughout ‘Prayer Before Birth,’ the poet engages with themes of religion and life struggles. This unusual poem, which comes from a very special speaker, engages with these themes in a direct way. Readers are not going to have trouble understanding the speaker’s view on religion and God, as well as life’s struggles. They spend the lines discussing the hard life they have to deal with once they’re born and their hope that God is going to grant them joy throughout it. It’s only through God, they allude, that they can live a good life.
Structure and Form :-
‘Prayer Before Birth’ by Louis MacNeice is an eight-stanza poem that is divided into uneven sets of lines. The first and sixth stanzas have three lines, the second and third have four, the fourth has six, the fifth has seven, and the seventh has ten. The poet chose to write this poem in free verse. This means that the lines do not conform to a specific rhyme scheme or metrical pattern. But, that doesn’t mean the poem is entirely without rhyme. Even those written in free verse still make use of some examples of structure. For example, the exact rhyme with “me” is repeated twice in stanza six and eight.
Literary Devices :-
MacNeice makes use of several literary devices in ‘Prayer Before Birth.’ These include but are not limited to:
Caesura occurs when the writer inserts a pause into the middle of a line. It can be done through meter or punctuation. For example, “would make me a cog in a machine, a thing with” in stanza seven.
Epistrophe occurs when lines end with the same word/words. For example, “me” at the ends of all four lines of stanza two. The word “me” ends lines in every stanza, in fact.
Enjambment occurs when the poet cuts off a line before its natural stopping point. For example, the transition between lines one and two of stanza seven and lines one and two of stanza three.
Mood of Poem :-
The mood is contemplative and concerned. Most readers may find some peace in the speaker’s words because there's also a concern as they’re inspired to consider their own life and what a child might experience they brought into it. The innocence of childhood is powerfully contrasted against the darkness of reality.
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