Reading Notes W6, Part B : Anna Laetitia Barbauld


Anna Laetitia  Barbauld – A fierce opponent of war and slavery. She was fearless and tough minded poet. With the poem “To a Little Invisible Being Who is Expected Soon to Become Visible” and “Eighteen Hundred and Eleven, a Poem” one can see the strength and the frailness of the author.

“To a Little Invisible Being Who is Expected Soon to Become Visible”
The author opens the poem with the description of birth as an emancipation from the womb and the mystery of what a child will become. She compares the possibility of what a child can become to the spring time when everything blooms. “Fresh younglings shoot, and opening roses glow, swarms of new life exulting fill the air, haste, infant bud of being, haste to blow” (327)! "That free thee living from they living tomb" describes how a child has no other choice but to be held prisoner in a living tomb, but when the time comes the little captive will burst through the living doors (the womb) and is now a part of society.
A beautiful sentiment of a mother’s longing to see the child that has been a part of her for nine months. Longing to see what she herself have been a part of creating within herself.

“Eighteen Hundred and Eleven, a Poem”
From beauty, life, and love to despair, depressing, and defeated.  The author is truthfully brutal in her observation and prediction of the future because of the war.

The call to war “Still the loud death drum, thundering from afar, O’er the vext nations pours the storm of war: To the stern call still Britain bends her ear.”  Soldiers are horrified, but committed to fight for their country, even though the author suggest that it is in vain. “Bounteous in vain” it does matter the gain of this war when there is so much fighting and bloodshed. “and war’s least horror is the ensanguined field.”  The author speaks of the fall of the British empire if they continue what she describes as a senseless war. The author criticizes Britain for being more concerned about wealth than their citizens. I believe this is the author’s main message throughout the poem. “The worm is in they core, they glory pass away; Arts, arms and wealth destroy the fruits they bring; Commerce, like beauty, knows no second spring.”

The poem has a very masculine tone to it, it’s challenging and direct. I admire the author’s courage to right her prediction unapologetically. I understand that it was hard to receive considering she was talking about her own country.

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