Louis MacNeice’s and Thom Gun’s poems Essay

Louis MacNeices and Thom guns numberss procedure the first voice to look at birth by babies eyes. They help us see that babies, unborn or new-sprung(a), argon living but powerless beings. They fag think and whole step but cannot make decisions or changes in their lives. MacNeices piece is burdened with desperate pleas from the womb for a chance to live while Gunns poem takes on a lighter shadiness towards a newborns protest to leaving the comfortable and familiar womb.Written in the mixed bag of a prayer, the Prayer Before Birth addresses God as its audience but the poets intention is very to decry the horrors of abortion to the ratifier. The poem takes on a troubled tone of one who is facing finis sentence. The solvents of its tone are made stronger through the use of the first person in the infertile unborn baby to dramatize the f be that it is alive and not given a choice for its life. to each one stanza repeats the fact that it has yet live. This set the reader int o the speakers deepest burden as it reveals its concerns.The poem alike uses images associated with pains and fears the speaker faces to beam its tone of deep depression. The first stanza shows us a childs nightmare of bat, rat and ghoul followed by equipment of torture such as w completelys, racks and drugs then vicious acts of treason and murder men in authority as in old men, bureaucrats and publicwho thinks he is God and finally the vivid description of the brutal act and the detachment of the speaker from its theme of humanity. All these depressive images are interrupted only in the third stanza, with a sense of vasting and in warmer tone, to experience life from childhood (being dandle) to death (being guided by a vacuous light). It brings images of nature and life and all that we take for granted.Even the poems structure supports the tone. The long sentences and heavy-sounding words (dragoon, dissipate and bloodsucking) communicate a heavily laden heart. The poem moves slowly with increasing length at each stanza and that tells of a deepening sense of hopelessness. The sixth stanza is very fiddling as if to communicate the end of the hope. The last stanzas lines shorten with each subsequent plea as if to signify the shortening timeleft.The poet chooses words that support the deeply burdened tone and evoke the readers emotional response. This is especially so when an innocent unborn has been subjected various agents of abortion in the form of creatures of the night (bat, rat and ghoul), equipment of torture (walls, racks and blood-baths), criminal acts (treasons and murder) and unloving human (lovers, beggars and bureaucrats). They communicate uncaring, cold and relentless in achieving their ends without regard to the subject. many an(prenominal) rarely used heavy-sounding and multi-syllabus words add to the minacious supposition as they dragoon, dissipate and engendered the speaker.And then the word thistledown excessively helps add the fina lity of the act as we picture the foetus as unattached weed just go directionless and exanimate (hither and thither) to be spilled like water into the drain. The use of the word me gives a picture of weakness to be subjected to other peoples direction (think me, beyond me, live me, curse me, razz me and hector me). The sum effect of the dramatic play of words is designed to create the dark, troubled mood of one facing death sentence and to draw a response from the reader.On the other hand, Gunn also uses the first voice but he gives the protesting baby a less intense tone. His intention is to let off the babys first cry and he thinks that it is from its reluctance to leave an environment of security and cacoethes for a strange and cold world. The poem carries an angry tone of complains (Things were different inside)and warm tone of memories (The perfect comfort of her inside). Like the previous poem, the effect of its tone is made stronger through the use of the first person wh o shares its experience first hand. Yet unlike the first poem, the tone it carries is not as overwhelming as to evoke a respond from the reader for it hints that it is only temporal (I whitethorn forget).Gunns poem also uses images but those of contrasting scenes to communicate its objection to the changes. One can hear the warm and longing tone as the baby thinks of the snug and secure jolly and aggrandize and the perfect comfort of her inside. Otherwise, the poem moves in exasperation as itcompares the warm and wet and inexorable womb with a rain of blood and the discomfort of the lighted outside world, the exposed and spacious voicelessness bed and the changes that comes when all time roars. Like MacNeices poem, it also communicates a helpless baby in the midst of the situation it cannot change as it lies raging, small, and red. And it may continue to rage till it forgets for it has no choice to the matter of whether it wants to be born.Gunns poem is designed to support the to ne of protest through its fast-paced, easy-to-read rhythm and rhyme and its short and even sentences. These, as compared with Prayer before birth, give the effect of a less forceful albeit angry tone. Its pace slow down a little in the last two stanzas (with longer vowels sleep, soon, womb and manner) as the child gets trite and slips into dreams of the familiar surrounding again.The poem keeps the lighter tone and moves with ease through informal and conversational language. Many of the words chosen in this poem refers to tangible objects as in womb, bed and room. The tone is also supported by choosing single-syllabi action words like fall, ride, amass and lie. All those action words imply how quickly everything happens between birth and the babys sleep. Many words also indicate the drastic differences the baby has to endure at birth e.g. from occult to a shared environment from the warm and wet and black womb to a lighted room and from padded and jolly to rustling. All these imply changes the baby needs to adjust to. But they are all temporal shock and the protest will not last even though the newborn may fight it But I wont forget that I regret. And eventually, all that is left of the memory of the womb may exist only in the babys dream. some(prenominal) poems revolve around the subject birth and give thought to life. The main difference is that MacNeices poem is meant to evoke a response or perhaps provoke the reader to action while Gunns poem only wants to share a response of a baby at birth.