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Louis Macneice

Prayer before birth

Easier questions to cut your teeth on!

Keith Tankard
Knowledge4Africa.com
Updated: 26 June 2012
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The poet looks through the eyes of an unborn child at all the fears that face modern humanity, and asks God -- or humanity? -- to spare him or her these terrors.



ABOUT THE POET

Frederick Louis MacNeice was born in Belfast in 1907. Although he was known as Freddie in his youth, he began calling himself Louis when he was a teenager.

MacNeice was educated at Marlborough College where he showed a deep interest for ancient literature and civilisation. He then went to Oxford University where he studied in Classics and Philosophy.

While there, he began to immerse himself in poetry and began publishing his own work. He graduated in 1930 and then started work as a lecturer in Classics at Birmingham University, at which stage he married Giovanna Ezra.

He thereupon lectured Greek for a short time at the University of London before joining the BBC as a writer and producer. It was there that he found a following for his poetry amongst his radio listeners.

Early in his career, MacNeice became identified with a group of politically committed poets and writers, people such as Stephen Spender, W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood.

Although many of these were socialist in their leanings, Macneice himself remained sceptical of political programs and steered clear of political philosophies.

He died of pneumonia in September 1963. He was then 56 years of age.

Have you looked at the questions
in the right column?
TEST YOURSELF!
Read the left column and then answer
the following questions:



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.
  • Who is praying and from where? (2)

[Need help?]

  • What is he praying for in this stanza? (2)

[Need help?]




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.
  • The word "console" means: to tease; to comfort; to punish; a type of glass? (1)

[Need help?]

  • Name two figures of speech found in "with wise lies lure me". (2)

[Need help?]




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.
  • Why should the child pray for fresh water, grass, trees, birds, bright light? (2)

[Need help?]




Forgive me
For the sins that in me the world shall commit.
  • Why should the child ask for forgiveness for sins he hasn't committed, but which other people will commit? (4)

[Need help?]




Mountains
frown at me, lovers laugh at me, the white
waves call me to folly and the desert calls
me to doom.
  • Comment on the language devices used in these lines. (4)

[Need help?]

  • What is the poet's main plea in this whole stanza? (6)

[Need help?]




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.
  • What is meant by "would dragoon me into a lethal automaton", and "would make me a cog in a machine"? (2)

[Need help?]




Those
who would dissipate my entirety, would
blow me like thistledown hither and
thither or hither and thither.
  • What is "thistledown"? Why should it be blown "hither and thither"? (4)

[Need help?]




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