THE PERFECTION OF THE BODY VS. THE MESSINESS OF THE SPIRIT

• Speaker describes the perfection of a newborn baby. Amazed by "precision" of nature's designs, notes every detail of baby's body impeccably crafted by "habit"— millions of years f "ignorant" biological processes. Vs, argue that "human passions" r frustratingly imprecise; unlike marvel of the body, thoughts and emotions r messy, mysterious, painful. At th sam time, th poem suggests an inherent link btn body n spirit: biology is an unthinking, unfeeling process, n it's only the combination f nature's "simple accuracy" with the more nebulous workings of the "spirit" that makes human beings human.
• encourage reader to marvel perfection of newborns body describing "intricate exacting particulars": the complicated n utterly precise details frm "the knee and the knucklebones" to "resilient fine meshings of ganglia and vertebrae" (strong yet delicate web f nerve cells n spinal bones). Calling on reader t "Observe th distinct eyelashes n sharp crescent fingernails", "Imagine the infinitesimal" (microscopic) "capillaries", "flawless connections of the lungs,", "invisible neural filaments". Incredible number of incredibly perfect parts, the speaker argues, seamlessly join t create human body.
• Unlike the body, the speaker finds the "human passions" that

  rule it rough and clumsy. The speaker says "the spirit" could

  never have created the baby because it is "too blunt" (or dull)

  "an instrument." In other words, the spirit lacks nature’s

  "precision," which has had eons to fine-tune its processes.

  "Human passions" are "unskilful" and lack finesse.
• there's also something rather cold and mechanical about the speaker's descriptions of the body. precise, medical terminology listing out biological parts n processes, divorcing these disparate pieces of anatomy frm the actual human being they combine to create. calling the body mere "habit," the speaker also presents nature itself as unthinking and unfeeling. It creates "perfectly" yet "indifferently," and the body's "precision" is "ignorant"—lacking in any sort of knowledge or self-awareness. The physical body might be a natural marvel, then, but it doesn't sound all that human.
• Thus, even as the speaker seems, at first, to celebrate bodily

  perfection over the messiness of the mind, it's not that simple.

  Just as the various parts of the body are seamlessly connected,

  so too are biological processes of the body connected to the

  mysterious impulses of "the mind." Nature's "ignorant

  precision" produces a "body" that, as soon as it's formed,

  "already answers to the brain."
• And while the speaker claims that "no desire or affection" could

  have created something so perfect as the baby in front of them,

  the poem implies otherwise. That is, these biological processes

  can only be set in motion by some "passion" or other—be it love,

  sexual desire, loneliness, etc. While biological processes may be

  automatic, the contact that initiates them is not.
• Human beings are the result of both "indifferent[]" biology and

  something harder to define or understand—the "vagaries" (or

  impulses) of the mind. These vagaries might "invent / love and

  despair and anxiety / and their pain," but it's up to readers to

  decide whether these feelings tarnish the perfection of the

  body or breathe life into it.