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“Prayer Before Birth” Introduction
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"Prayer Before Birth" is a poem by the Anglo-Irish poet Louis MacNeice, written during World War II and first published in MacNeice's 1944 collection Springboard. The speaker, an unborn child, prays for future guidance and protection from the horrors of the modern world, and possesses great foresight about humankind's capacity for self-destruction and violence. The speaker ultimately insists that, if this prayer cannot be answered, the speaker would rather not be born at all. The poem is thus a damning condemnation of the state humanity found itself in around the middle of the 20th century.
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“Prayer Before Birth” Summary
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I haven't been born yet. Please listen to me. Don't let vampire bats, rats, stoats, or even ghosts with deformed feet get close to me.
I haven't been born yet. Please make me feel better. I'm afraid that people will imprison me, drug me, deceive me, torture me, and bathe me in the blood of those they massacre.
I haven't been born yet. Please give me water to play in, long grasses that will grow around me, trees that I can talk to, singing skies full of birds—and a sense of what's right to guide me through life.
I haven't been born yet. Please forgive me in advance for the bad things that the world will make me do—the horrible things I'll say, the terrible things I'll think. Forgive me for my betrayals, though they will be caused by others, and for the murders people will make me commit. Forgive me when I die for how my life turned out.
I haven't been born yet. Please teach me the role I will have to play in life, and how to respond when old men tell me what to think, when officials pressure me. Teach me what do when mountains are angry at me, or when lovers mock me. Teach me what I should do when the crashing waves ask me to be foolish, and the desert calls me to death and destruction. Teach me how to act when beggars reject my charity and my own children hate me.
I haven't been born yet. Please listen to me—I don't want violent, beastly men to come near me, nor those who think they are God.
I haven't been born yet. Please grant me the strength to resist the people who want to take away my humanity, and those who want to turn me into a killing machine. Don't let them force me to be one small part of some greater contraption, something with no individuality. Don't let them reduce me to a mere object, and don't let them dissolve my identity. I'm talking about those people who would blow me all over the place as if I were the fine hair on a thistle plant. I don't want to be like water spilling out of their hands.
Please don't let them turn me into a cold, hard-hearted stone or spill me. If you can't help me with this prayer, then don't let me be born at all.
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“Prayer Before Birth” Themes
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The Corruption of Humanity
“Prayer Before Humanity” is a bleak poem written from the perspective of an unborn child. The speaker makes a desperate plea (most likely to God, given that this is a “prayer”) asking for strength and guidance to navigate the world—a frightening, violent place in the poem, full of cruelty, greed, and outright evil. Through this prayer, the poem implies that humanity has lost its way, becoming stuck in a cycle of hatred, destruction, and denial that threatens to corrupt the innocence of each new generation.
The fact that the speaker is an unborn child means they’re currently protected from humanity, safe inside the warmth of a womb. But the speaker knows that, in being born, they will become part of the human family—a prospect the poem presents like something out of a horror movie. The speaker begins by asking for protection from “bloodsucking bat[s]” and “ghouls” before moving on to concerns that are less macabre, yet no less terrifying. The poem refers to imprisonment, drugs, lies, murder, and torture as inevitable parts of the human experience.
The issue isn’t only that the speaker is afraid of these things themselves, either; the speaker anticipates how there will be a conflict between the speaker’s innocence and the corrupting influence of the humanity. That is, the speaker understands that in being born to the human world, the speaker will become a member of the “human race”—that same race that the speaker fears will drug, lie to, imprison, and torture them.
Before even being born, the speaker thus asks for forgiveness for the sins that the world is going to make the speaker commit, for the inevitable “treason” that comes from getting by in such a world. The speaker asks for practice when it comes to “the parts [they] must play” and “the cues [they] must take” in responding to the horrors the speaker will face, implying that a loss of innocence is practically inevitable and inescapable.
Yet even as the poem has an atmosphere of hopelessness, the speaker maintains a degree of grit and determination. The speaker asks for the “strength” to combat “those who would freeze [the speaker's] humanity,” for example. It isn’t that humanity is inherently corrupt, then, but that it has become corrupt. Perhaps, if humanity had to become a self-destructive, there remains the possibility of change—the faintest glimmer of hope for a better world.
That said, the speaker senses that the chance of human civilization changing its ways is remote. The speaker wishes to retain their innocence—to not be made into a “stone”—but most of the poem suggests that this is near-impossible. In the poem’s powerful last line, the speaker states clearly that they would rather die than live in a world in which their innate humanity has to be corrupted, casting doubt on whether the speaker really wants to be born at all. In the end, then, the poem asks whether it’s fair to bring new life into a world so full of death and destruction.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-39
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Nature vs. Industrialization
The poem’s speaker—an unborn child—ask for future help, strength, and guidance in the life that they’re about to lead. The speaker’s prayer is mostly defined negatively—that is, by things that the speaker actively wants to avoid, to be strong against. But there is one thing the speaker actively wants: a close relationship with the natural world. The poem implies that nature, unlike corrupted human society, is a loving, nurturing influence.
The poem then contrasts this powerful vision of nature with the harsh, unforgiving trends of industrialization and mechanization—a seismic societal shift that was, of course, caused by humanity. Given nature's nourishing power, the poem implies that industrialization—and people’s resulting distance from nature—is in part to blame for humanity’s dismal state.
Even as the speaker wants to avoid most of the world, the speaker prays to be “provide[d]” with water, grass, trees, the sky, and birds. Water will “dandle” the speaker—that is, swing the child playfully and lovingly. Trees will “talk” to the child, probably teaching better lessons about care and compassion than most of the human world that surrounds them. The sky itself will “sing” to the speaker, suggesting joyfulness and aesthetic beauty. Together, these aspects of nature would make the speaker a stronger and better person.
This relationship with nature, the speaker feels, goes hand-in-hand with a “white light / in the back of my mind to guide me.” White light here refers a kind of moral strength and virtue—one that, not incidentally, is symbolically linked to the warmth and life-giving light of the sun. The poem thus clearly portrays the natural world as a positive influence. In a poem mostly concerned with the worst aspects of humanity, this is a much-needed moment of hope.
But, as the speaker is fully aware, nature is just one of many potential influences on a new life. The speaker knows that the world in which they are about to arrive for the most part doesn’t prioritize nature. Instead, it’s full of damaging industrialization—factories, pollution, mass reproduction, the thirst for profit, and so on. This industrialization doesn’t just have a damaging effect on nature, but on people too.
Towards the end of the poem, the speaker asks not to become “a lethal automaton” nor a “cog in a machine.” Both of these images depict the way the modern world can dehumanize people through technology, by turning an individual into a kind of unthinking killing robot (the poem seems to be referring to soldiers) or just a part in some larger contraption built for hatred and violence.
The poem thus clearly equates humankind’s appetite for destruction (remember, this was written during WWII) with the trend towards mechanization. Losing touch with nature, then, means losing touch with the better aspects of humanity itself.
Perhaps that’s why the poem turns once more in its closing lines to an image of nature. The speaker seeks strength against those who “would / blow me like thistledown hither and / thither” or spill the speaker like water. Thistledown is the feathery material on thistles that gets blown about in the wind (to aid the spread of its seeds). The poem refers to it here as a symbol of the fragility of nature which, of course, relates to the unborn child’s own vulnerability. It’s a slightly confusing image because being “blown” is exactly what the thistledown is meant for, but it clearly refers back to the earlier vision of nature. The reader, then, is left with the impression that the natural world—like humanity itself—is under threat.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 8-11
- Lines 20-23
- Lines 28-37
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Modernity, Conformity, and Free Will
While the poem for the most part focuses on humanity's capacity for violence and self-destruction, another concern is the way that the modern world erodes people's individuality and free will. The speaker fears that the world that they will be born into only allows for one type of person—a kind of mass-produced individual who does what they're told and never questions the larger systems at work around them.
The speaker fears being imprisoned, drugged, lied to, and tortured—but also fears becoming the perpetrator of such terrible acts. The speaker separates themselves from any actual agency, however, saying that the world will commit "sins" through the speaker, that an ambiguous "they" will "murder by means of my hands." That is, the speaker will become a helpless tool of the corrupt modern world, a kind of puppet forced to do terrible things just to conform and survive.
The idea that modern society demands total conformity finds its fullest expression in the fifth stanza, as the speaker asks to be "rehearse[d]" in the role that they must play in society. Life here is presented as something that happens to the speaker, and which requires certain "cues" and results in unavoidable "folly" and "doom." The speaker anticipates being a kind of passive witness to their own life, following all the expected steps and unquestioningly putting up with all the expected indignities of the modern world. In other words, the speaker would be little more than an actor in the play of life, with no real agency or individuality.
The poem goes on to argue that there are those out there who would wish to turn the speaker into an unthinking killer (a "lethal automaton") or make the speaker a mere "cog" in some larger "machine" of death and destruction. Modern society threatens to completely efface the speaker's humanity—to turn them into an object, a "thing," that only deserves to exist so long as it can provide something useful to the larger contraption that is human society.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 4-7
- Lines 12-24
- Lines 28-37
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Prayer Before Birth”
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Lines 1-3
I am not ...
... come near me."Prayer Before Birth" establishes its unique perspective right away: that of an unborn child ("I am not yet born"). Immediately, then, the poem confronts the reader, asking them to suspend their disbelief and understand that the following "prayer" will be more symbolic than literal.
The speaker fears being born, and feels the need to pray—possibly to God, but maybe also to humanity itself—for future assistance, guidance, and protection. The particular fears contained in this stanza feel like they've been taken from a horror movie, however. Few people, generally speaking, are genuinely afraid of bats, rats, stoats, or "club-footed ghoul[s]"! These are more childlike fears, the stuff of ghost stories. The poem lures the reader into a false sense of security by suggesting that the speaker's fears are unfounded—that speaker's concerns are akin to those of a child scared of monsters in the closet or under the bed.
The sounds of these lines themselves make the fears feel childlike and maybe even a bit comical. Note the strong consonance, assonance, and alliteration at work in these lines, with the intense repetition of /b/, /l/, /t/, /s/, /k/, /uh/, and /ah/ sounds:
[...] the bloodsucking bat or the rat or the stoat or the
club-footed ghoul come near me.These sounds, combined with the polysyndeton (the repeated "or"), could almost be lifted from a nursery rhyme. In a way, this opening stanza emphasizes the inherent innocence of the speaker, who seems to represents humanity in pure, uncorrupted form.
The first stanza also establishes the overall formula for the poem. Though the poem is written in free verse (without strict meter) and with varying stanza lengths, it nevertheless has a very repetitive structure.
Each stanza (apart from the last) starts with the refrain "I am not yet born" and ends with the word "me" (an example of epistrophe). In this sense, the first stanza sets in motion the prayer-like structure of the poem—think about how Christian prayers often start with an address to God, and end in "Amen." This is part of the poem's overall parallelism, in which grammatical elements of individual sentences or phrases are frequently repeated.
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Lines 4-7
I am not ...
... blood-baths roll me.
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Lines 8-11
I am not ...
... to guide me. -
Lines 12-17
I am not ...
... they live me. -
Lines 18-24
I am not ...
... children curse me. -
Lines 25-27
I am not ...
... come near me. -
Lines 28-32
I am not ...
... face, a thing, -
Lines 32-37
and against all ...
... would spill me. -
Lines 38-39
Let them not ...
... Otherwise kill me.
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“Prayer Before Birth” Symbols
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Nature
Nature in the poem represents nourishment and compassion—a harmonious, peaceful, and moral world that contrasts sharply with the many horrors of the modern industrialized society. In the third stanza, the speaker prays for:
water to dandle me, grass to grow for me, trees to talk
to me, sky to sing to me, birds and a white light
in the back of my mind to guide me.This section proposes an alternative idea of what it means to be human that contrasts with the bleak vision of conformity, alienation, and violence offered elsewhere in the poem. The natural relationship depicted here is joyful and nurturing. The grass grows "for" the speaker, and the personified trees and sky talk and sing to the speaker—because this is a vision of life lived in partnership with nature. Where humanity is filled with deceit, torture, and violence, nature is generous and loving, uncorrupted by humanity's greed and appetite for destruction.
The "white light" is the speaker mentions here is more specifically symbolic of a kind of moral backbone. Both the color white and light itself typically represent purity and morality in literature, and the speaker hopes to be guided by such morality upon navigating the decidedly immoral human world.
The poem returns to nature towards the end, comparing the speaker to the fine feathery material on a thistle (which gets blown about by the wind). This maps nature's fragility—in a world full of human violence—onto the speaker's own vulnerability as an unborn child.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Lines 8-11: “provide me / With water to dandle me, grass to grow for me, trees to talk / to me, sky to sing to me, birds and a white light / in the back of my mind to guide me.”
- Lines 21-23: “the white / waves call me to folly and the desert calls / me to doom”
- Lines 33-37: “would / blow me like thistledown hither and / thither or hither and thither / like water held in the / hands would spill me.”
- Line 38: “Let them not make me a stone and let them not spill me.”
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Machinery
One of the speaker's main fears about being born is that the world will deny them the best attributes of humanity (comparison, creativity, free will, and communion with nature) and emphasize the worst (violence, conformity, deception, and so on). The poem makes a clear link between these worst characteristics and modern technology, with an eye specifically on the technology-enabled horrors of war. Modern machinery in the poem symbolizes the erosion of free will, individuality, and humanity itself.
In lines 30 and 31, the speaker asks for "strength against those who [...] would dragoon me into a lethal automaton." Likewise, the speaker fears those who "would make me a cog in a machine." Both images relate to mass production, mechanization, and modern industrialization. The ability of the modern world to make identical versions of the same product maps onto the speaker's worry that they will have to be just like everybody else in order to survive.
The poem further associates the cold efficiency of modern technology with humankind's ability for self-destruction. The poem relates machinery—which can only do what it is specifically designed to do—with a fear that people will no longer think for themselves; that instead, they will simply do whatever they're told, like a programmed bit of machinery. This is what the speaker means in talking about being a "cog in a machine," a worry that human life has no value other than its usefulness in serving the status quo.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Lines 30-31: “would dragoon me into a lethal automaton, / would make me a cog in a machine,”
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“Prayer Before Birth” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Alliteration
Alliteration is a major feature of “Prayer Before Birth.” Generally speaking, alliteration intensifies the poem’s images and ideas, making scary things scarier and hopeful things more hopeful. The speaker uses language playfully, packing the poem full of similar sounds.
The first example of alliteration plays with this childlike tone. In the poem’s second line, the speaker expresses a fear of “bloodsucking bat[s],” along with other quite cartoonish creatures (e.g., ghouls). This section might lure the reader into a false sense of security by listing things that aren’t really, in truth, very frightening—the kind of threats and dangers found in children’s horror stories. The alliteration here heightens that effect, almost as if count Dracula is about to appear in the poem. Of course, this sets up the reader for a shock in stanza 2, in which the speaker lists threats that are far more terrifying and real.
The second stanza, then, uses alliteration in all the phrases from line 5:
[...] tall walls wall me,
with strong drugs dope me, with wise lies lure me,
on black racks rack me, in blood-baths roll me.While the alliteration in the first stanza was cutesy and fun, here it’s much more sinister. It has a suffocating, violent effect, evoking the fears listed in the stanza. “Tall walls wall me” feels like a kind of imprisonment, while “strong drugs dope me” suggests the strength of these narcotics. Packing so many sounds in such a small space allows the reader no moment’s rest, giving the poem a deep sense of unease and tension (which, of course, is exactly what the speaker feels).
In stanza 3, the poem reaches its most hopeful point. Here, the speaker asks to be granted a close relationship with the natural world. The alliteration in “With water,” “grass to grow,” “trees to talk,” and “sky to sing,” sounds happy and carefree, also suggesting a kind of natural abundance—as though the sounds are growing freely on the poem’s lines.
This optimism is short-lived, however. “[T]reason” and “traitors” in line 15 re-establish the poem’s sinister atmosphere, before lines 19 to 23 deploy alliteration similarly to the second stanza—as a kind of sonic weapon. The onslaught of sound is bolstered by strong assonance in this stanza as well:
In the parts I must play and the cues I must take when
old men lecture me, bureaucrats hector me, mountains
frown at me, lovers laugh at me, the white
waves call me to folly and the desert calls
me to doom and the beggar refusesHere, the speaker worries that life will be one long, exhausting performance—a performance that will never really make sense. Alliteration combines with assonance and consonance that once again prevents the poem from having any breathing space, as though life is full of panic (even the laughing lovers seem sinister).
Where alliteration appears in the poem:- Line 2: “bloodsucking bat”
- Line 5: “walls wall”
- Line 6: “drugs dope,” “with wise lies lure”
- Line 7: “black racks rack,” “blood-baths roll”
- Line 9: “With water,” “grass to grow”
- Lines 9-10: “trees to talk / to”
- Line 10: “sky to sing”
- Line 11: “my mind”
- Line 14: “thoughts,” “they think”
- Line 15: “treason,” “traitors”
- Line 16: “my,” “murder by mean,” “s,” “my”
- Line 17: “my”
- Line 19: “parts,” “play”
- Line 20: “men,” “me,” “me, mountains”
- Line 21: “lovers laugh”
- Lines 21-22: “white / waves”
- Line 22: “desert”
- Line 23: “doom”
- Line 36: “held”
- Line 37: “hands”
- Line 38: “stone,” “spill”
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Apostrophe
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Assonance
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Asyndeton
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Caesura
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Consonance
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Enjambment
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Metaphor
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Parallelism
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Polysyndeton
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Refrain
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Repetition
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Simile
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“Prayer Before Birth” Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Stoat
- Club-footed ghoul
- Console
- Dope
- Racks
- Dandle
- Treason
- Engendered
- Bureaucrats
- Hector
- Folly
- Dragoon
- Automaton
- Dissipate
- Entirety
- Thistledown
- Hither
Stoat-
(Location in poem: Line 2: “the stoat”)
A small, weasel-like animal.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Prayer Before Birth”
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Form
The poem is a dramatic monologue told from the perspective of an unborn child. It lacks a specific form beyond this, however, with its 39 lines broken into eight stanzas of varying length.
Despite this lack of stanza consistency, the poem feels very structured and repetitive. This is thanks in part to the fact that every stanza except for the last begins with the poem's refrain: the phrase "I am not yet born" followed by a request for help in the form of an imperative verb (e.g., "hear me").
The refrain has a somewhat hypnotic effect. The intense use of repetition and sonic devices like alliteration, consonance, and assonance throughout also make the poem feel like a spell or incantation, as though the speaker is trying to conjure the kind of God they need in order to have their prayer heard.
One stanza breaks with the refrain formula established by the rest of the poem: the last. This is a dramatic moment that relates what the speaker desires if their prayer can't be granted. The speaker says they would rather die than be made into a "stone" (an unfeeling person) or spilled like water (lose their sense of individuality and will). It's an unquestionably bleak moment, one that offers no suggestion that the speaker's prayers can be answered.
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Meter
"Prayer Before Birth" doesn't follow any particular meter. Instead, the poem mainly relies on its refrain ("I am not yet born") as well as intense repetition, alliteration, assonance, and consonance to build a sense of momentum and direction throughout.
The poem often turns specifically to parallelism (the repetition of grammatical structures across different phrases), which sometimes this recreates the effect of meter. Take, for example, lines 5-7:
[...] with tall walls wall me,
with strong drugs dope me, with wise lies lure me,
on black racks rack me, in blood-baths roll me.Though there is still no overarching meter in the poem, these lines have an obvious rhythm: unstressed-stressed-stressed-stressed-unstressed. Lines 6-7 are exact matches metrically, in fact, both with 10 syllables arranged in the same pattern. Notice how each clause packs stressed syllables tightly together (as though, perhaps, they are imprisoned in the line). This makes the repeated "me" sound weak, neatly representing the conflict at the heart of the poem: that of the unborn speaker vs. the entire world. The rhythm of each phrase suggests the speaker will have little chance of resisting the evils of the world.
Moments like this pop up throughout the poem, again creating a sense of rhythm and intensity in specific moments despite an overarching lack of regular meter. Lines 13-17 of the fourth stanza, for example, feature a da-da-DUM, da-da-DUM rhythm over and over again:
[...] my words
when they speak to me, my thoughts when they think me,
my treason engendered by traitors beyond me,
my life when they murder by means of my
hands, my death when they live me.The erratic enjambment (which is, of course, intentional) means that these lines can't be neatly organized into specific feet (ignoring line breaks, these might all be called anapests). Still, a kind of galloping rhythm still fills these lines—surging forward, in a rapid, cascading motion, as though the speaker is hurtling into an abyss of worry.
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Rhyme Scheme
"Prayer Before Birth" has a strange rhyme scheme. While the stanzas vary greatly in terms of length, each follows the same pattern: the first line and last line of the stanza always rhyme (with various numbers of non-rhyming lines in between). More specifically, the two words that appear after the refrain rhyme with the final two words of each stanza. For example, take stanza 1:
I am not yet born; O hear me.
Let not the bloodsucking bat or the rat or the stoat or the
club-footed ghoul come near me.Stanza 4 has the same pattern, albeit with many more lines in between those rhymes:
I am not yet born; forgive me
For the sins that in me the world shall commit, my words
when they speak to me, my thoughts when they think me,
my treason engendered by traitors beyond me,
my life when they murder by means of my
hands, my death when they live me.These rhymes give the poem a sense of cadence and musicality that fits with the prayer form. Think about the way that established prayers sound different from regular speech—there is something strong, powerful, and moving about them.
The final stanza is then a little different. These two lines create a rhyming couplet, which repeats the rhyme sounds from the previous stanza:
I am not yet born; O fill me
[...]
hands would spill me.Let them not make me a stone and let them not spill me.
Otherwise kill me.The repetition of "spill me" is called an identical rhyme. All this repetition adds a final, intense flourish to the speaker's plea.
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“Prayer Before Birth” Speaker
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The speaker in "Prayer Before Birth" is an unborn child praying for help for the life that lies ahead of them. Though they are unborn, the speaker knows a lot about the world that awaits—in particular, the speaker is aware of how much horror and suffering humanity inflicts upon itself, and how there will be societal pressure on the speaker to conform.
The speaker lists a wide variety of fears and worries, ranging from torture and massacre in the first stanza to more mundane worries about daily life in the fifth (what to do, for example, when "bureaucrats hector me"). Overall, then, the speaker provides a wide-ranging—and damning—perspective on humanity.
That said, the speaker does provide some hope the third stanza. Here, the speaker presents a vision of life lived in harmony with nature, offering a short-lived dose of optimism in an otherwise bleak poem. The third stanza reads more like what an unborn child deserves than what they should expect.
With the above in mind, it's worth acknowledging that poem is obviously a logical impossibility. Unborn children know nothing of the world they are to be born into, nor do they have the ability to express thoughts about that world. Really, then, the poem is asking provocative questions of the reader—if an unborn child knew what awaited them, would they still want to live their life?
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“Prayer Before Birth” Setting
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In a literal sense, the fact the speaker is unborn means that they are talking—rather, the reader is asked to imagine that they're talking—from the safety of a mother's womb.
However, the speaker also has a vantage point from which to view humanity and the world in general. This represents the second layer of the poem's setting: the modern world itself. According to the poem, this is a very bleak place—filled with torture and murder, conformity and mass consumerism, war and hatred, bureaucracy and false prophets. No wonder the child is afraid of being born!
The references to machinery reflect the increasing automation of work in the first half of the 20th century, when the poem was written, but many of the poem's problems can be ascribed to the contemporary world as well. The lack of specificity to the horrors described makes the poem feel more universal and urgent, relevant to readers young and old alike.
The poem also makes brief reference to the natural world in the third stanza, which provides a short-lived moment of optimism.
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Literary and Historical Context of “Prayer Before Birth”
Literary Context
"Prayer Before Birth" was published in Louis MacNeice's 1944 collection Springboard, but had been written in 1943—at the height of World War II. At the time, MacNeice was supporting the British war effort by writing and producing radio plays for the BBC aimed at bolstering public opinion in favor of the war.
MacNeice is considered a member of the Auden Group, a group of British and Irish writers including Stephen Spender, Cecil-Day Lewis, and, of course, W.H. Auden himself. The Auden Group (also called the Auden Generation) was lumped together based on being about the same age, having gone to Cambridge or Oxford, and leaning left in their politics.
MacNeice's work wasn't overtly political but often expressed a keen social awareness and used emotional, accessible language that proved very popular in his own lifetime. MacNeice also opposed totalitarianism, and while this poem doesn't mention war explicitly, there are clear gestures towards humankind's capacity for violence and self-destruction.
Accordingly, it's worth looking at the poem alongside with the work of some WWI and WWII poets. In its unblinking bleakness, "Prayer Before Birth" has more in common with the poetry based on the direct experience of war's horrors—from poets like Siegfried Sassoon ("Suicide in the Trenches"), Wilfred Owen ("Anthem for Doomed Youth"), and Keith Douglas ("Simplify Me When I'm Dead")—than it does with more jingoistic poets like Rupert Brooke and Jessie Pope ("Who's for the Game?").
But the anxieties of "Prayer Before Birth" stretch far beyond any particular conflict, and confront readers with questions about modern life itself. In its concern for the way technology and mass production erode individuality, the poem finds common ground with one of the biggest films of the era—Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times (in which Chaplin himself becomes a "cog" in a great machine).
Another important aspect of "Prayer Before Birth" is its perspective—that of an unborn child. The poem grants the speaker the innocence and vulnerability that are usually associated with childhood itself. William Blake wrote often on this subject, and was similarly concerned with the way that the world corrupts the humanity of those born into it. A number of contemporary poets have also written specifically about those who are unborn—that is, children growing in the womb. Readers might want to check out "Something in the Belly" by Deena Metzger, or "Song for Baby-O, Unborn" by Diane di Prima.
Finally, it's worth acknowledging that the poem is titled as a prayer and borrows snippets of biblical language. The most obvious of these is in the phrase "Let not" / "Let them not." This evokes the book of Job, in which the title character curses the day that he was born: "Let the day perish on which I was born." This, of course, ties in with the speaker's question about whether it's a good idea to enter the world, or if it would be better to die in advance.
Historical Context
"Prayer Before Birth" was written in 1943, at the height of World War II. The poem doesn't make specific reference to the conflict, but it certainly lurks in the background.
World War II was a devastating conflict that killed an estimated 85 million people worldwide. And it was, of course, the second incredibly deadly conflict of the century. Though humankind had made huge technological and intellectual progress in the preceding centuries, that such brutal wars could take place undermined the sense that this was progress at all. Many felt that perhaps technology had merely made humankind more efficient and creative in its own self-destruction (a sentiment echoed in "Prayer Before Birth").
The poem also makes reference to the industrialization of the modern world. The 20th century saw big leaps in mass production and globalization. Fordism—the work philosophy pioneered by famed automaker Henry Ford—created jobs that were incredibly repetitive and time-pressured. The poem's speaker worries that being "a cog in a machine" will erode their sense of individuality, thereby implying that these societal trends threatened the nature of humanity itself.
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More “Prayer Before Birth” Resources
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External Resources
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MacNeice's Life and Work — A great resource on Louis MacNeice from the Poetry Foundation.
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A Cog in the Machine — A clip from Charlie Chaplin's "Modern Times" that relates to the poem's second-to-last stanza.
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The Poem Read Aloud — Listen to a great reading of the poem by actor Ralph Cotterill.
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The Poet's Voice — Hear MacNeice himself recite one of his most famous poems, "Bagpipe Music."
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MacNeice and the BBC — An interesting article about MacNeice's work during World War II.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Louis MacNeice
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