Prayer Before Birth

                                 Prayer Before Birth

   

             Louise MacNeice has written this poem for a Child who is yet not born the . Child must be in the womb of the mother and before facing the world the Child prays to God. The poem  in that sense is a prayer of as unborn child who is yet to come in the world.

   

           In the very first line of the very first stanza the unborn child urges to God

                                   “ I am not yet born, oh hear me.”

The child request to God to listen what child  is complaining and says to God to protect him from “Blood Sucking Bat” and from those who may appear to him like “choul” and also the deeds of such devil like person and want from God not to let such person “come near to me”. Again in the starting of the second stanza unborn child request God ‘to console him’ and expressing his fear regarding ‘tall walls’ built by men through ‘tall walls’ child talks about the rules and regulations of society and said to protect him from ‘wise lies’.

   

        In the third stanza, child request to God ‘to provide him with water that can purify his  sins, grass that can grow for him, tree that can talk with him , sky that sing for him and also birds and light. Then , the child ask for forgiveness for the sins that will cultivate in him by the time and for treason that may engendered in him. Child asks to rehears him for roles that he has to ply when   elders lectures him, desert calls him a doom , beggar refuses his gift and his own child curse him.

         

          In last stanza, child request to fill him with strength against those who freeze ‘humanity’, those who  dissipate eternity and to survive himself when he is in such hands that  holds him like a water and ‘spill him’. In last two lines urges to God That                       

                                          “let them not make me a stone

                                           let them not spill me

                                           otherwise kill me”

his fear to survive in selfish and cruel world, he has to became stone. So he request to god  ‘kill  me  over not to let him witness of selfishness and cruelty of the world. Thus, this poem is about a unborn child who expresses emotions that worried about his present and future that he does not want to corrupt his soul in this world.                 

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