Speaker or Narrator, and Point of View
The first-person speaker is a woman addressing her male partner concerning the sexual act and period of gestation.
Form and Meter
The poem is composed of four quintets written in iambic tetrameter with a regular rhyme scheme of ABCAA.
Metaphors and Similes
Metaphors
-"The eyeless labourer in the night" (Line 1): The fertilized egg is compared to someone who works without sight or light.
-"This is our hunter and our chase" (Line 9): The developing child metaphorically takes on the role of the couple's pursuer and prey.
"This is the blood's wild tree that grows / the intricate and folded rose" (Lines 14-15): Developing life is compared to nature.
-"This is the maker and the made" (Line 16): The creation of life is given divine significance with this metaphor.
-"this is the question and reply" (Line 17): The creation of life is compared to a mystery: it is both the question and answer.
-"the blind head butting at the dark" (Line 18): The creation of life is posited as something rather ignorant in this metaphor.
-"the blaze of light along the blade" (Line 19): The creation of life and the labor of birth are compared to a blazing light along a blade.
Alliteration and Assonance
Alliteration
-"selfless, shapeless seed" (Line 2): The /s/ repeats.
-"silent and swift and deep from sight" (Line 4): The /s/ repeats.
-"This is the maker and the made;" (Line 16): The /m/ repeats.
"the blind head butting at the dark, / the blaze of light along the blade" (Lines 18-19): The /b/ repeats.
Irony
N/A
Genre
Lyric Poetry
Setting
The setting is partly the woman's womb. Otherwise, the setting is the outside world.
Tone
Awe-struck, Wondering, Contemplative
Protagonist and Antagonist
The protagonist is humanity and the way in which life is created. The antagonist is pain, as well as whatever may interfere with the process of creating life.
Major Conflict
The major conflict of this poem is the question of how the miracle of life occurs. But this is not so much a conflict because "this is the question and reply," meaning that the answer is in the asking. Creating life is the point.
Another conflict could be the labor that is alluded to in the end.
Climax
The climax occurs in the final stanza when the woman begins labor. She calls out in fear for her partner to hold her.
Foreshadowing
The "unimagined light" at the beginning of the poem alludes to the "blaze of light" that comes later—signaling the time from conception to birth.
Understatement
N/A
Allusions
N/A
Metonymy and Synecdoche
The "maker" may be considered a metonym for God, or the Creator.
Personification
The lines "This is no child with a child's face; / this has no name to name it by; / yet you and I have known it well" suggest that the fetus does not quite yet have the status of personhood, but that the couple love the fetus as their own child.
Hyperbole
N/A
Onomatopoeia
N/A
