A Prayer for my Daughter
by W.B.Yeats
About the auther:
by W.B.Yeats
About the auther:
William Butler Yeats ( born June 13, 1865, dead January, 28 1939) was a celebrated Irish poet , prose writer and dramatist. In 1889 he met a woman named Maud Gonne, who was brilliant, passionate and beautiful, and instantly fell in love. this love, however, was not reciprocated. his marriage proposal was turned down several time, yet he still joined the Irish nationalist cause with her because of her passion for Ireland and conviction. In 1903, she married major John MacBride, an Irish soldier who shared her hatred for England. He finally married George Hyde- Less in 1917 and had two children with her , a daughter and son. It is his daughter, Anne Butler Yeats, that the poem daughter and son. It is his daughter , Anne Butler Yeats, that the poem concerns.
Summery of the poem:
A Prayer for my daughter by William Butler Yeats opens with image of the new born child sleeping in a cradles. A storm is raging with great fury outside his residence. A great gloom is on Yeats mind and is consumed with anxiety as to how to protect this child from the tide of hard time ahead. The poet keeps walking and praying for the young child and as a he does so he does so he is in a state of reverie. He feels a kind of gloom and worry about the future of his daughter.
He says " As I walk and pray for my younger daughter i imagine in a state of excitement and revels that the future years have already come and that they seem to come dancing to the accompaniment of a drum which is beading frantically. These future years are seen Yeats' imagination as emerging out of the murderous innocence of the sea. In other words, the sea seems to be innocent but is capable of giving birth to those howling storms which are capable of leveling everything.
Yeats wants his daughter to possess some qualities so that she can face the future years independently and with confidence. Yeats says: Let her be given beauty but a more important thing is that her beauty should not be of a kind which may either make her proud of her beauty or distract a stranger's mind and eyes. those whose beauty is capable of making them proud consider beauty an end in itself. The result is that pride leads to their losing natural kindness in some cases of that heart revealing intimacy which helps them to make the right choise in life. Being able to make the right choices in life is a very important thing but those who have excessive beauty are unable to do so and never find a good friend in the true. Sense of the world, The great thing about the poem is that it has a specific as well as general applicability. At the same time the poem makes an indirect reference to Maud Gonne also whom Yeats loved so much and could not win her hand.
The poet looks with in himself and finds that there is hatred inside. He thinks that hatred kills innocence and wishes that his daughter should not harbor hatred. It was because of this unwholesome bent of the the mind that Maud. Gonne, married a fool. The poet wished hat her daughter should not cultivate a frantic intellect, he thinks that her daughter can remain innocent if she is free from hatred and intellectual fanaticism. The innocence is self delighting, self appeasing and self affrighting. The poets last wish is that his daughter should marry a person of aristocratic family. Who may take her to a home where tradition and ceremony fill the atmosphere.
A prayer for his daughter can be interpreted for the restoration of order and grace in a battered civilization. In "The second Coming", Yeats had described his vision of the future world torn by anarchy. Yeats believed, as he has expressed in "The Second Coming " that the Christian civilization had reached in its Zenith and was disintegrating now. The prayer for his daughter's survival becomes also a prayer for an improvement in the world. the term "ceremony" is a keyword in Yeats thought, and it involves not just formal ritual or courtesy but also order, grace and reverence. Yeats uses the world "ceremony" by associating it with the horn of plenty, bestowed of all kind of virtue.
It is facile to argue that the poem is not really a " prayer" or that Yeats is not praying for his " Christian virtues" for his daughter. Yeats wishes for organic innocence and freedom from from hatred the basis on which other virtues will inevitable grow. the images in the poem that serve to express the poet's wishes for the future flourishing tree, songbirds, sweet music, green laurel tree, the horn of plenty all emphasize the need for order, aim, grace and joy in a battered civilization.
In the end the poem is a prayer for order and grace can in a battered civilization. Behind the prayer, of course, are Yeats bitter memories of Maud Gonne who had come to stand for the tragedy of how beauty and grace can be distorted by politics, intellectual hatred and arrogance.
Summery of the poem:
A Prayer for my daughter by William Butler Yeats opens with image of the new born child sleeping in a cradles. A storm is raging with great fury outside his residence. A great gloom is on Yeats mind and is consumed with anxiety as to how to protect this child from the tide of hard time ahead. The poet keeps walking and praying for the young child and as a he does so he does so he is in a state of reverie. He feels a kind of gloom and worry about the future of his daughter.
He says " As I walk and pray for my younger daughter i imagine in a state of excitement and revels that the future years have already come and that they seem to come dancing to the accompaniment of a drum which is beading frantically. These future years are seen Yeats' imagination as emerging out of the murderous innocence of the sea. In other words, the sea seems to be innocent but is capable of giving birth to those howling storms which are capable of leveling everything.
Yeats wants his daughter to possess some qualities so that she can face the future years independently and with confidence. Yeats says: Let her be given beauty but a more important thing is that her beauty should not be of a kind which may either make her proud of her beauty or distract a stranger's mind and eyes. those whose beauty is capable of making them proud consider beauty an end in itself. The result is that pride leads to their losing natural kindness in some cases of that heart revealing intimacy which helps them to make the right choise in life. Being able to make the right choices in life is a very important thing but those who have excessive beauty are unable to do so and never find a good friend in the true. Sense of the world, The great thing about the poem is that it has a specific as well as general applicability. At the same time the poem makes an indirect reference to Maud Gonne also whom Yeats loved so much and could not win her hand.
The poet looks with in himself and finds that there is hatred inside. He thinks that hatred kills innocence and wishes that his daughter should not harbor hatred. It was because of this unwholesome bent of the the mind that Maud. Gonne, married a fool. The poet wished hat her daughter should not cultivate a frantic intellect, he thinks that her daughter can remain innocent if she is free from hatred and intellectual fanaticism. The innocence is self delighting, self appeasing and self affrighting. The poets last wish is that his daughter should marry a person of aristocratic family. Who may take her to a home where tradition and ceremony fill the atmosphere.
A prayer for his daughter can be interpreted for the restoration of order and grace in a battered civilization. In "The second Coming", Yeats had described his vision of the future world torn by anarchy. Yeats believed, as he has expressed in "The Second Coming " that the Christian civilization had reached in its Zenith and was disintegrating now. The prayer for his daughter's survival becomes also a prayer for an improvement in the world. the term "ceremony" is a keyword in Yeats thought, and it involves not just formal ritual or courtesy but also order, grace and reverence. Yeats uses the world "ceremony" by associating it with the horn of plenty, bestowed of all kind of virtue.
It is facile to argue that the poem is not really a " prayer" or that Yeats is not praying for his " Christian virtues" for his daughter. Yeats wishes for organic innocence and freedom from from hatred the basis on which other virtues will inevitable grow. the images in the poem that serve to express the poet's wishes for the future flourishing tree, songbirds, sweet music, green laurel tree, the horn of plenty all emphasize the need for order, aim, grace and joy in a battered civilization.
In the end the poem is a prayer for order and grace can in a battered civilization. Behind the prayer, of course, are Yeats bitter memories of Maud Gonne who had come to stand for the tragedy of how beauty and grace can be distorted by politics, intellectual hatred and arrogance.
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