Summary
The narrator describes
a normal setting and infant in the first three lines. The narrator lets the
reader believe that the baby is healthy, normal, and is merely taking a nap:
since he asks the reader to be quiet. However the last line completely alters
the entire poem, the narrator reveals that the baby girl is dead and is being
put to rest in the earth. The reader now interoperates the poem differently.
When the narrator says the child is lying down, he means in a coffin. When he
says lullabies are being sung he means the death march or perhaps the “ring-around-the-rosie”
song which is ironic, since it has become a child’s song. And when he says to
pray and be quiet, he means pray for the poor child’s soul and to stay quiet so
that she and her family may be in peace. And the last line is describing (briefly)
that her coffin is being buried and covered with dirt.
Reader
Response
At first I thought this
was going to be a silly little poem about a beautiful baby, and the poem was
completely normal then I got to the last line. I did not know how to intemperate
it at first, I obviously understood that the baby was dead but I had to go back
and re-read the poem to fully understand the true meaning of the poem. After
reviewing it, I was stunned. It is crazy how words can be twisted and manipulated
so easily and can have so many different means and connotations. I liked the poem up until the last line, over
all the poem is depressing and I didn’t really like it as a whole. It is too
sad for my taste and too dark, I like dark like Edgar Allen Poe, but this is a
whole other level of dark.
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