The poem is a prayer spoken by an unborn child, pleading for protection from the horrors of the contemporary world. In eight stanzas, the child asks to be sheltered from frightening creatures, fears being manipulated or coerced by lies and drugs, and requests access to nature's beauty. The child asks forgiveness for future sins committed under the world's influence and requests guidance to navigate life's difficulties. Most importantly, the child seeks protection from tyrants who would destroy its humanity and turn it into a lifeless machine, concluding it would prefer abortion to such a fate.

1. Prayer Before Birth
Louis MacNeice

2. Louis MacNeice
1907-1963
• Louis MacNeice born September 12, 1907, in Belfast, Ireland.
• Attended Oxford University: classics and philosophy.
• 1930 accepted post as classics lecturer, University of
Birmingham.
• 1941 joined BBC as a staff writer and producer.
• MacNeice found an audience for his work through British radio.
• MacNeice was as mistrustful of political programs as he was of
philosophical systems.
• Was candid about the ambiguities of his political attitudes.
• Chose to live the majority of his adult life in London
• MacNeice frequently returned to the landscapes of his
childhood.
• Took great pride in his Irish heritage.
• 1963, on location with a BBC team, went into mineshaft to check
on sound effects. Caught pneumonia.
• He died on September 3, 1963
• He was 55 years old.

3. Context
Social & Historical
Written in 1944
Bombing of London
War grinding to climax
Literary and Cultural
“The writer today should be
not so much the mouthpiece
of a community…as its
conscience, its critical faculty,
its generous instinct.”
-Louis MacNeice, 1946

4. “Prayer Before Birth”
Genre:
Poetry; free verse
Audience:
1944: citizens also experiencing WWII
Subject:
The pre-natal prayers of the unborn child to protect it against the horrors of the contemporary world
of 1944
Purpose: (context related)
1944: possibly cathartic expression of MacNeice’s fears of the state of war-torn Europe
2014: possibly as warning against a return to apocalypse (world war)?

5. 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.
I am not yet born, console me.
I fear that the human race may 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.
I am not yet born; 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.
I am not yet born; forgive me
For the sins that in me the world shall commit, my words
when they speak 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.
I am not yet born; rehearse me
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 refuses
my gift and my children curse me.
I am not yet born; O hear me,
Let not the man who is beast or who thinks he is God
come near me.
I am not yet born; O fill me
With strength against those who would freeze my
humanity, would dragoon me into a lethal automaton,
would make me a cog in a machine, a thing with
one face, a thing, and against all those
who would dissipate my entirety, would
blow me like thistledown hither and
thither or hither and thither
like water held in the
hands would spill me.
Let them not make me a stone and let them not spill me.
Otherwise kill me.
Key features: overview
Structure:
• Eight stanzas
• Free verse
• No end line rhymes (but does have internal ones)
• Shape significant – reminiscent of Psalms (sung prayers)
• Repetition of “First line” as a ritualistic refrain;
statement, then imperative tense command
• Verbs on each first line: hear; console; provide; forgive;
rehearse; hear; fill – indicate focus of the verse
• Ends with final command

6. 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.
I am not yet born, console me.
I fear that the human race may 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.
I am not yet born; 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.
I am not yet born; forgive me
For the sins that in me the world shall commit, my words
when they speak 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.
I am not yet born; rehearse me
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 refuses
my gift and my children curse me.
I am not yet born; O hear me,
Let not the man who is beast or who thinks he is God
come near me.
I am not yet born; O fill me
With strength against those who would freeze my
humanity, would dragoon me into a lethal automaton,
would make me a cog in a machine, a thing with
one face, a thing, and against all those
who would dissipate my entirety, would
blow me like thistledown hither and
thither or hither and thither
like water held in the
hands would spill me.
Let them not make me a stone and let them not spill me.
Otherwise kill me.
Key features: overview
Language:
•Use of “O” in supplication to “God”
•Biblical language: imagery, sentence
structure
•Modern lexis
•Sounds emphasised
•Only one simile throughout
•Present tense used: “I am not yet born”
•Many imperative verbs used “console me.”

7. Verse 1: positioning the reader
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.
Analysis
• Monosyllables in 2nd line
• Pace rolled on as a result
• Listed mammals are associated with evil
• Images of hell and deformity
• Childhood nightmares
Summary:
The first fear refers to all the frightening things of
the night, both real and imaginary.

8. Verse 2: fear of coercion
I am not yet born, console me.
I fear that the human race may 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.
Analysis
• Assonance creates rolling, inevitable pace
• Internal rhyme “Wise lies lure me….black racks rack” create a fearsome chant-like quality; ritualistic quality of the
soothsayer
• Oxymoron “wise lies” enforces idea of trickery
• Imagery staggeringly graphic “blood-baths roll me”
• All echoes the context of 1944/War
Summary:
Next is the fear of being closed in by lies
and persuasion, being led by drugs,
tortured both mentally and physically, and
being made to participate in warfare and
other massacres.

9. Verse 3: the vision of a better world
I am not yet born; 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.
Analysis
• No words more than two syllable: language of innocence
• Mystical white light hints at a pure vision
• Joyful contrast from previous verses and provides shock of next verses
• Whole poem full of personal pronouns: I, me, my, which provides the intimate feeling of confession
• Dandle - to dance an infant in the lap/on the knees – creates a family image
Summary:
The poet makes a plea for the good
things of life which today are fast
disappearing: clean water, love,
forests, birds and purity ("white
light") as a guide.

10. Verse 4: forgiveness for future actions
I am not yet born; forgive me
For the sins that in me the world shall commit, my words
when they speak 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.
Analysis
• Most overly Biblical language so far: “forgive; sins; shall commit” sustains and
deepens the confessional like content
• Strong sense of inevitable betrayal, and conspiracy
• “for the sins in me the world shall commit” = a sense of original sin in all of us, but
it is the pre-existing world that will produce (“engender”) these sins.
• Strong use of paradox = “my death when they live me”
Summary:
The child asks for forgiveness for all the sins that the
world is going to make him commit in the future: his
wrong words, his evil thoughts, those times when he
is led to commit treason, the times when he will be
forced to kill other people ultimately for his own death
of spirit, because he has been forced to give into
these social pressures.

11. Verse 5: desire to act with guidance
I am not yet born; rehearse me
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 refuses
my gift and my children curse me.
Analysis
• Extended Stage metaphor: the roles to navigate in life; none pleasant
• “Lecture, hector (internal rhyme), frown, laugh, refuses, curse = visceral verbs
• “Folly, doom, beggar refuses my gift = lexis generally of rejection and humiliation
• Tone: ‘If life is to be this bad, is it worth it?’ – pessimistic? Resignation?
Summary:
The child asks to be guided into the part he
must act in this dramatic performance of life
so that he is able to perform his role correctly,
and that he be given all the right clues on how
to react when important people lecture him or
laugh at him. Note the metaphor of the stage.
Note too the extended personification:
mountains frowning, deserts calling, etc.

12. Verse 6: protection from tyrants
I am not yet born; O hear me,
Let not the man who is beast or who thinks he is God
come near me.
Analysis
• Technically, whole verse is one sentence
• Acts as a warning
• “…the man who is beast…or thinks he is God…”
• Strong echoes in tone of Revelations (final book of new testament) or Prophet
Ezekiel (old testament)
• A clear contemporary reference to Hitler as beast, and his delusional nature as
thinking he is God.
• 3 lines = almost a hiatus before the final descent into chaos and death
Summary:
A plea is made that tyrants and
autocrats (like Adolph Hitler) may not be
allowed to come near him.

13. Verse 7: chaos; the metaphor of the machine
I am not yet born; O fill me
With strength against those who would freeze my
humanity, would dragoon me into a lethal automaton,
would make me a cog in a machine, a thing with
one face, a thing, and against all those
who would dissipate my entirety, would
blow me like thistledown hither and
thither or hither and thither
like water held in the
hands would spill me.
Analysis
• War destroys the soul and character: become “a thing”
• Abstract nouns dominate: strength, humanity, entirety
• One cannot be spilled literally…figurative simile for the Soul?
• Repetition suggests a desperate pleading
Summary:
He asks for the strength not to become a killing
machine ("lethal automaton") or just a part in a
machine ("cog in a machine"): he pleads that he
be not allowed to become inhuman ("a thing") or
something that is completely at the mercy of
others ("blow me like thistledown hither and
thither") or spilt as if he were just water.

14. Verse 8: denouement
Let them not make me a stone and let them not spill me.
Otherwise kill me.
Analysis
• All monosyllables, except the adverb “otherwise” = unambiguously simple, primary
language: reverberates with finality
• Horrific idea that the pre-natal child would elect for death instead of life…but the
life described is worse than death.
• Line and half line gives the poem terminal impact.
Summary:
His final plea is that his heart may not
turn to stone, or his life be wasted.
Failing that, he would rather be
aborted right away.