A Prayer for My Daughter Examples

A Prayer for My Daughter

"A Prayer for My Daughter" is a lyric poem by Irish poet William Butler Yeats. First published in 1919, the poem expresses a father's anguish over his innocent daughter in the midst of a frightening and chaotic world. The father, the speaker of the poem, also expresses his desires for his daughter to have beauty (but not too much), and be filled with courtesy and kindness. He also expresses a desire for her not to be overly opinionated and filled with hatred, but that she would be self-pleasing and not rely on the opinions of others. Finally, he expresses a desire for her to live in a harmonious place with her husband.

Examples of A Prayer for My Daughter:

This is the full text of the poem:


Once more the storm is howling, and half hid
Under this cradle-hood and coverlid
My child sleeps on. There is no obstacle
But Gregory's Wood and one bare hill
Whereby the haystack and roof-levelling wind,
Bred on the Atlantic, can be stayed;
And for an hour I have walked and prayed
Because of the great gloom that is in my mind.


I have walked and prayed for this young child an hour,
And heard the sea-wind scream upon the tower,
And under the arches of the bridge, and scream
In the elms above the flooded stream;
Imagining in excited reverie
That the future years had come
Dancing to a frenzied drum
Out of the murderous innocence of the sea.


May she be granted beauty, and yet not
Beauty to make a stranger's eye distraught,
Or hers before a looking-glass; for such,
Being made beautiful overmuch,
Consider beauty a sufficient end,
Lose natural kindness, and maybe
The heart-revealing intimacy
That chooses right, and never find a friend.


Helen, being chosen, found life flat and dull,
And later had much trouble from a fool;
While that great Queen that rose out of the spray,
Being fatherless, could have her way,
Yet chose a bandy-leggèd smith for man.
It's certain that fine women eat
A crazy salad with their meat
Whereby the Horn of Plenty is undone.


In courtesy I'd have her chiefly learned;
Hearts are not had as a gift, but hearts are earned
By those that are not entirely beautiful.
Yet many, that have played the fool
For beauty's very self, has charm made wise;
And many a poor man that has roved,
Loved and thought himself beloved,
From a glad kindness cannot take his eyes.


May she become a flourishing hidden tree,
That all her thoughts may like the linnet be,
And have no business but dispensing round
Their magnanimities of sound;
Nor but in merriment begin a chase,
Nor but in merriment a quarrel.
Oh, may she live like some green laurel
Rooted in one dear perpetual place.


My mind, because the minds that I have loved,
The sort of beauty that I have approved,
Prosper but little, has dried up of late,
Yet knows that to be choked with hate
May well be of all evil chances chief.
If there's no hatred in a mind
Assault and battery of the wind
Can never tear the linnet from the leaf.


An intellectual hatred is the worst,
So let her think opinions are accursed.
Have I not seen the loveliest woman born
Out of the mouth of Plenty's horn,
Because of her opinionated mind
Barter that horn and every good
By quiet natures understood
For an old bellows full of angry wind?


Considering that, all hatred driven hence,
The soul recovers radical innocence
And learns at last that it is self-delighting,
Self-appeasing, self-affrighting,
And that its own sweet will is heaven's will,
She can, though every face should scowl
And every windy quarter howl
Or every bellows burst, be happy still.


And may her bridegroom bring her to a house
Where all's accustomed, ceremonious;
For arrogance and hatred are the wares
Peddled in the thoroughfares.
How but in custom and in ceremony
Are innocence and beauty born?
Ceremony's a name for the rich horn,
And custom for the spreading laurel tree.


Note that the turmoil of the world is represented in the symbolism of the tumultuous weather in the first few stanzas. Also, note how this is contrasted with the innocence of a sleeping baby in a cradle-while a storm is "howling" outside.


The poet also uses allusion in stanza 4 when he references Helen of Troy, whose beauty was great, but also prompted a war. The speaker would like for his daughter to be beautiful, but not so beautiful that it would make a "stranger's eye distraught."


Each stanza in this lyric poem has an AABBCDDC rhyme scheme. The meter of the poem is varied and includes iambic pentameter-lines of 10 syllables with five feet alternating unstressed and stressed syllables. For example: "And may her bridegroom bring her to a house." There are also some lines that are trochaic-that start with a stressed syllable and then alternate. For example: "I have walked and prayed for this young child an hour".

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