How Do These Poems Present the Ideas of Infancy and Childhood?

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of mundane, manual labor. Hence, the last line of the poem, “Otherwise kill me”, is all the more impactful since the child essentially admits that death is preferable to living in such a callous and depersonalized world. Perhaps MacNeice is suggesting that childhood is a crucial stage of life, a period where everyone should be allowed the possibility to develop their own unique personality and character.

Much like Prayer Before Birth and Infant Sorrow, Once Upon a Time by Gabriel Okara tells us of hardships and pain that lie ahead in the future. While Once Upon a Time does represent the world as a cold-hearted place, it is important to note that the poem also supports Blake’s philosophy expressed in Infant Joy that people are essentially born innocent and thus opposing the Christian concept of ‘original sin’, which was the prevalent belief in society during the time. Once Upon a Time is told from the perspective of a father who lost his innocence, explaining to his young son of the bleak realities that restrained the freedom of ‘colored men’ during the time period of which Okara resided. In the 4th stanza, Okara shows how he had to wear different personas such as “homeface” and “officeface” in order to endure this harsh adult world. The use of these neologisms suggests that the only way he can survive is to be ‘fake’ – with “fixed portrait smiles” and “shaking hands without a (my) heart” – and comply with the expectations of the powerful. This highlights how Okara was forced to adapt to a society which disproportionately favored white people during the 1950s, a period where being racially prejudiced was socially accepted. Furthermore, the title and the beginning of Once Upon a Time suggests that the once warm and amicable world, where people “used to laugh with their hearts” is no more, almost as if this world simply never existed, like the kind of imaginary fairytale that typically start with the often-used phrase “Once upon a time”. Hence, Once Upon a Time portrays childhood as a stage of purity, as seen in the penultimate stanza. Here it is shown that the father (the narrator) “wants to relearn how to laugh” from his son who still remains pure, unlike him who lost the sincerity in his smile, while the only thing left of him is his “snake’s bare fang”-like teeth, in which the sibilant and fricative sound of “snake” and “fang” emphasizes the father’s sinister nature that has been tainted by a racist society.

When juxtaposed, Once Upon a Time and Infant Sorrow, it is evident that Blake and Okara share similarly negative conceptions about society and its poor treatment of children overall. While William Blake focused his criticism towards social institutions like the Church of England which led adults to believe in what he saw as fallacious arguments such as ‘original sin’ and ‘baptism’, Okara criticized the racism surrounded him and still remains within our society today. Moreover, along with MacNeice’s Prayer Before Birth, the purpose of all of these poems are quite similar in the sense that they are pieces of social commentary which criticize society’s mistreatment of children, whether it is through its religious institutions, its cultural biases and racism, or through methods of deception and propaganda.

Sylvia Plath’s poem – You’re – differs from Prayer Before Birth in that the speaker is the mother, not the child, while both poems are about a baby that has not yet been born. Infancy is viewed in a positive light in You’re and Plath expresses ambivalence towards infancy – the uncertainty and the excitement of childbirth – through a myriad of similes and metaphors. The use of similes is apparent from the beginning of the poem; Plath describes the baby as “Clown-like”, since clowns have a natural instinct to entertain and bring joy to people – much like Infant Joy, where infancy is also seen as a celebratory event. In addition, Plath refers to her baby as her “little loaf”, in the last line of the first stanza. This metaphor illustrates an image of a warm oven with a loaf of bread, gradually developing and becoming whole, indicating that growth during childhood is a positive process. However, it is also imperative to note that Plath also shows uncertainty of the child’s future, shown primarily through her use of caesura in line 3, which represents a short pause during which the narrator displays hesitation for her child. You’re expresses the fundamentally mysterious nature of childhood and especially infancy.

Piano, by D.H. Lawrence, features an analepsis of a man’s memory – signified by “taking me back down the vista of years” in line 2 – with a child listening to a piano being played by his mother. With the “boom of the tingling strings” and “tinkling piano”, Lawrence creates a soothing image of his childhood through the use of onomatopoeia. The soft and exquisite sound of the strings and piano sets a peaceful tone to the poem, thus conveying the idea that childhood is a carefree time and expresses the poet’s longing for the same pleasant childhood that he had with his mother, willing to cast down his “manhood” in the “flood of remembrance”. This suggests the man wishes to leave all the responsibilities of an adult behind and return to the innocent state of childhood instead. Clearly, Piano and Once Upon a Time share a common theme of “nostalgia”, as they are both written from a perspective of an older man reminiscing about their respective pasts. While Okara yearns for his lost innocence, Lawrence longs for a sense of happiness that he connects distinctly with his childhood experiences.

In conclusion, the theme of childhood and infancy is a crucial part in all 6 poems, however, each poet speak from various angles, including their own interpretation to the subject. Whether expressed joyously and playfully like Infant Joy and You’re, or hopelessly and ominously as Prayer Before Birth and Infant Sorrow, each poem’s view on childhood are inevitably impacted by the particular aspects of society of which they were written and also the poet’s own past personal experiences.