Please give a summary of the poem "Prayer before birth" by Louis MacNeice.

The poem, “Prayer Before Birth”, by Irish writer Louis
MacNeice, is a narrative by an unborn child, still in the woman of a woman, offering a
harsh opinion of the world he or she will be born into. Right from the beginning of the
poem the mood is one of gruesomeness. The opening lines are an introduction to the poem
and in parallel an introduction to the reader of the tone of the poem and of the world
the child will enter into. This is evident in the callous, unsparing
line:

Let not the bloodsucking bat or
the rat or the stoat or the
club-footed ghoul come near
me.

Further indications of this
unborn child’s fear is that he or she asks to be consoled. This unborn child fears a
life of being doped up by drugs. The child also fears that walls (barriers) will be
constructed around it, so that it cannot live free as he or she will desire to –
society’s conventions may be a hindrance to his or her plan to live a peaceful, loving,
free life.

This unborn child desires to
experience the beauty of life – the natural world with its birds, colors, light, bright
skies, as well as verdant grass and trees. The child foresees that there can be good in
life, but also foresees that humankind’s destructive nature can overpower all of this
and cause life to be terrible.

Not even born
yet, the narrator in this poem talks of being forgiven of sins yet to be committed. The
child knows that sin, wrong behavior, and wrong choices that result in harm and damaged
relationships will happen. The child feels that this is inevitable and is already
tortured and worried by these thoughts.

In
essence, this unborn child wants to grow up, after birth, to be a person with
compassion, empathy, and love for others. However, he or she fears she will become a
robot, so-to-speak, in a confused and chaotic world that will beat him or her down.
Ultimately, this child does not want to have a heart of stone, just functioning, and not
really living a full creative and wonderful life in harmony with, and at peace with,
others in a just society.