Addison's poem pictures a birth as both a private event and a kind of world-making. The newborn is "time" itself, a small bundle held upside down by the heels, squealing at a strange new world. Sea imagery runs through the whole thing: the mother's breast is a "milk rock pendulum," the cradle rocks like a hull, and the child is a ship of hope leaving "quiet eternity" behind.
The speaker sounds awed and tender, almost overwhelmed. The syntax is broken and crowded, with words piling up and sentences skipping ahead, which suits the jolt of new life. The middle section lingers on the baby as a clown, laughing before sadness arrives and answering adult worries with simple joy.
By the end, the mood turns celebratory. Hope glows and overflows "generationally," passing from one life to the next. The closing line suggests the birth is a beginning, a home, and a song sung again, with the child as a "Builder" of what comes next.