Prayer Before Birth Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABA AAAA ACDA AEAAFA AGHDIJA AKA AFLMNOPQBA AA| I am not yet born O hear me | A |
| Let not the bloodsucking bat or the rat or the stoat or the | B |
| club footed ghoul come near me | A |
| - | |
| I am not yet born console me | A |
| I fear that the human race may with tall walls wall me | A |
| with strong drugs dope me with wise lies lure me | A |
| on black racks rack me in blood baths roll me | A |
| - | |
| I am not yet born provide me | A |
| With water to dandle me grass to grow for me trees to talk | C |
| to me sky to sing to me birds and a white light | D |
| in the back of my mind to guide me | A |
| - | |
| I am not yet born forgive me | A |
| For the sins that in me the world shall commit my words | E |
| when they speak me my thoughts when they think me | A |
| my treason engendered by traitors beyond me | A |
| my life when they murder by means of my | F |
| hands my death when they live me | A |
| - | |
| I am not yet born rehearse me | A |
| In the parts I must play and the cues I must take when | G |
| old men lecture me bureaucrats hector me mountains | H |
| frown at me lovers laugh at me the white | D |
| waves call me to folly and the desert calls | I |
| me to doom and the beggar refuses | J |
| my gift and my children curse me | A |
| - | |
| I am not yet born O hear me | A |
| Let not the man who is beast or who thinks he is God | K |
| come near me | A |
| - | |
| I am not yet born O fill me | A |
| With strength against those who would freeze my | F |
| humanity would dragoon me into a lethal automaton | L |
| would make me a cog in a machine a thing with | M |
| one face a thing and against all those | N |
| who would dissipate my entirety would | O |
| blow me like thistledown hither and | P |
| thither or hither and thither | Q |
| like water held in the | B |
| hands would spill me | A |
| - | |
| Let them not make me a stone and let them not spill me | A |
| Otherwise kill me | A |
Louis Macneice
(1)
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