In my first reading of “To a Little Invisible Being Who is Expected Soon to Become Visible”, by Anna Lætitia Barbauld, I knew it was about a baby being born, but the language the poet chose made it hard to understand. The poet used complicated vocabulary and it was hard to understand the tone of the poem. I found the title unusually long but it helps the reader understand the purpose of the poem as it’s addressed to an audience that isn’t even born yet. During my reading, I noticed that all the stanzas have four lines and similar lengths. Another thing I found interesting was that there are nine stanzas which I saw as a representation of the nine months of pregnancy. 

The poem first starts out with “Germ of new life” which refers to the unborn baby and the excitement of the mother because of words like “happy”, “auspicious”, and “precious”. The mother is full of mysterious curiosity about the baby and doesn’t care about the gender or what it may look like and just finds the concept of the baby fascinating. The way the poem is written makes it seem like it’s dedicated to someone else and in this case, it’s a mother speaking to her unborn child. The first two stanzas focus on the long process of pregnancy and the delight that comes with it. 

In the third stanza, the mother describes to her baby the beauty of nature and what she wants to show the child, and how everyone is eager to see the baby. Halfway through the fourth stanza, there’s this unnatural pause. “But far the most anxious parent longs On their soft cheek a mother’s kiss to lay ”. Unlike the rest of the poem, each line has a natural finish, but in this case, it’s an odd break. I saw this as an emphasis on what was most important to the parent, which is the longingness to kiss the child’s cheek. Another instance of this type of break happens in the sixth stanza, “She longs to fold to her maternal breast Part of herself, yet to herself unknown;”. This follows a trend of unnatural breaks where it happens when the role of a mother is directly assumed. The first refers to the physical love that a mother can provide and the second is the biological factor. 

The poem as a whole after a couple of reads has an excited connotation. It has a rhyming scheme of ABAB CDCD and nearly all the words have the same amount of syllables so it has kind of a giddy tone. Despite the complex vocabulary Barbauld chose to use, the short words she chose gives the poem a child-like excitement.

Something I found confusing was in the fifth stanza where the womb is compared to a tomb. “That free thee living from thy living tomb”. I found this odd because compared to the rest of the poem, it’s unusual to compare pregnancy to a tomb which is very contradictory because one is about birth and the other is death. There’s another comparison to prison doors in the eighth stanza but the author may have chosen these types of analogies to emphasize the excitement of the mother. But the sixth stanza has a warm tone as it gets into what the mother hopes her child can achieve through her own sacrifices.

In the last couple of stanzas, motherly love is present. There are a couple of instances where the line ends with an exclamation point which further shows how little she can wait for her baby’s birth. When reading this poem, I focused too much on the possible social factors like economic status because matrons and nurses were mentioned so I thought they might be wealthy. But towards the end, the poem is simply talking about a mother wanting to give her child the best life possible. 

“With favouring spells to speed thee on thy way” confused me in a sense because it adds a magical touch. If she was able to chant a spell, she would cast it in order to meet her beloved baby.

I enjoyed this poem a lot. At first glance, it’s pretty long both in name and length but after a couple of reads it’s really just a sweet read. The title suggests the obvious, an unborn child that will soon be born and released into the world. The poem has a ton of complexities but yet is also simple to understand. All nine stanzas address the thoughts of the mother. She’s excited to meet her baby and give it the best life possible no matter what sex it is and is prepared to do anything for the baby.