Infant Sorrow - Poem

Poem

Infant Sorrow

"My mother groan'd! my father wept.

Into the dangerous world I leapt.
Helpless, naked, piping loud;
Like a fiend hid in a cloud.

Struggling in my father's hands,

Striving against my swaddling bands;
Bound and weary I thought best
To sulk upon my mother's breast."

One thing that generally goes unnoticed in this poem is the use of the past tense to describe this birth. The speaker is no longer a baby: he has had some experience of the dangerous world and he turns back to see the dreadful moment when - like a fiend, not like an angel - he came to life. The verb "leapt" suggests his exhausted mother's last push after a painful labour, with no tender arms to take and cuddle this creature. The baby found itself half stifled with the poor bandage wrapped around its tiny body and its father's hands to hold him tight. He tried to free himself, as hard as he could, but his attempt was vain and in the end he could only surrender and \"sulk upon ... mother\'s breast\". The struggle is symbolical of any attempt of contrasting tyrannical oppressive power (the father, the institutions, the church itself...) and the final moment of surrender is the negative acceptance of one's destiny.