The Horror of Modern Warfare
This poem was written in response to an attack on London by Nazi bombers. The German air force terrorized the entire city by targeting civilians rather than just strategic military installations. This tactic introduced a new horror to the practice of warfare which had predominantly limited itself to certain "rules" of conduct. Rather than battles which pitted soldiers again soldiers, the fascist powers in World War II completely changed the rules by making even children acceptable targets of military might. This makes the identification of the subject of the poem as "a child" significant. It becomes an indictment for the inhumanity of terrorism as a strategy of modern warfare.
The Tragedy of Senseless Death
The speaker's refusal to mourn the death of the child that is asserted in the title becomes increasingly ironic as the narrative unfurls. The speaker is insistent on not admitting to mourning the child's death precisely because the victim is a child. Gradually, it becomes clear that the poem actually is an elegy intended to mourn that death. Such is the overpowering absurdity of an innocent young child becoming a victim of war that the refusal to mourn is actually an assertion of a mourning so profound that language is not enough to convey the depth of emotion at this unspeakable tragedy.
The Afterlife
The speaker makes several allusions to Judeo-Christian religious iconography. This imagery seems to suggest a sense of peace with the inhuman tragedy of the child's death due to a belief in the afterlife. The final line of the poem is ambiguous on the issue, however: "After the first death, there is no other." This line could be interpreted in two different ways. One could interpret it within the religious references which preceded it to suggest that the child will only die once but go on to experience immortality in heaven. On the other hand, the speaker also references the burial and decomposition of a body as a result of worms eating flesh. Therefore, the final lines could equally well be interpreted as suggesting that when the body dies, there is no life which exists afterward and therefore no death, either.
