Online Class Lecture Note from Dr. S. K. Paul, Professor and Head; University Department of English; B R A Bihar University, Muzaffarpur.
PG Semester-III, CC-10, Unit-I Modern Poetry/ W. B. Yeats
A Prayer for my Daughter
W. B. Yeats - 1865-1939
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.
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Online Class Lecture Note from Dr. S. K. Paul, Professor and Head; University Department of English; B R A Bihar University, Muzaffarpur.
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. O 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,
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Online Class Lecture Note from Dr. S. K. Paul, Professor and Head; University Department of English; B R A Bihar University, Muzaffarpur.
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?
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Online Class Lecture Note from Dr. S. K. Paul, Professor and Head; University Department of English; B R A Bihar University, Muzaffarpur.
Ceremony's a name for the rich horn, And custom for the spreading laurel tree.
A Prayer for My Daughter, exposes the typical modernist sentiment of the poet. The poet has portrayed a way of life and would like his daughter to adopt it. The kind of philosophy, he formulates in the poem is oriented towards an emphasis on the importance of tradition, custom and culture in the modern world which is dominated by chaos. The tradition, custom, culture is certainly aristocracy.
He is of the opinion that aristocracy is the only culture which can redeem the modern world of chaos and anarchy. For him, aristocracy is the source of aesthetic, intellectual and cultural beauty. Therefore, probably because of Nietzsche’s influence upon him, he expresses his hatred for commoners and wishes his daughter to be trained in the school of aristocracy. He considers it an ideal way of life. This is a leisurely, well-reasoned ideal, based not only on mythology and history, but also on his own experience.
The poet advocates and essentially non-Christian order, the keynote of which is a man's sense of his own nobility and self-sufficiency. The poet has left sentiments and pathos behind and has cultivated an almost tragic outlook. He can now combine the appreciation of beauty with a sense of the tragic rather than a pathetic element of life. He can now impart meaning to the ordinary events of life which his earlier poetry did not attempt. In the process his poetry becomes a vehicle of public speech. The poem is strikingly flexible. The poem can move through description of the place we are beginning to recognize the tower; it can freely describe the poet's mood of gloom and then move to the idea of beauty in women from there to symbols of great love found disappointing, to Helen, Aphrodite and by implication to Maud Gonne.
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Online Class Lecture Note from Dr. S. K. Paul, Professor and Head; University Department of English; B R A Bihar University, Muzaffarpur.
The poem is decorated with a number of phrases and images that are suggestive and evocative. Much is implied, and more is meant than strikes the ear. The poem is a mixture of symbols; its richness of texture is remarkable; and is easy flow of ideas. The storm howling symbolizes destruction, recalls the "mere anarchy loosed upon the world" of the poem The Second Coming. The flooded streams also recall the havoc to be wrought in The Second Coining. "The murderous innocence of the sea" also recalls the images of "blood-dimmed tide". The bandy-legged smith is McBride and Helen is Maud Gonne by implication. Yeats has Maud Gonne in his mind when he says that "It's certain that fine women eat a crazy salad". "The rich Horn of Plenty" is suggestive of courtesy, aristocracy, and ceremony. The "hidden laurel tree" can provide through custom the innocence of soul. So the images follow one after another in succession. The image of Helen evokes another figure Aphrodite, who rose out of the spray. The union of Aphrodite with Hephaestus bandy legged Smith, brings to mind the Maud Gonne-McBride episode. Thus the image cluster becomes increasingly complex.
In this poem, the poet praises courtesy, charm, wisdom and the glad kindness that Yeats had found in marriage. His main outburst is against hatred, and especially the 'intellectual hatred'. The idea is that a beautiful woman should despoil the subjectivity of her nature by the politics of objectivity, or sacrifice the unity of her being to a cause outside itself. Because of his showing of hatred in the poem some critics have pointed out that the poem is snobbish. The poem has a ring of optimism about it in thinking that mere anarchy cannot harm the child if she is innocent and is nicely bred.
The poem has also been criticized as based on triviality, for the poet has not desired for his daughter a way of life consistent with the highest religious or moral ideals. He has not prayed for any Christian virtues for her. Reverent as he is, he does not convey any religion. Instead, we are offered in the poem an
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Online Class Lecture Note from Dr. S. K. Paul, Professor and Head; University Department of English; B R A Bihar University, Muzaffarpur. aristocratic faith. However, all such criticism is irrelevant. The poet desires for her organic innocence and freedom from hatred. The ideals which he upholds are not theoretical but practical, and they can be easily adopted into practice and a state of grace attained. The poet has formulated and essentially non-Christian order, the keynote of which is man's sense of his own nobility and self- sufficiency. The poet has been true to his convictions and so the poem is another expression of his artistic honesty.
On A Prayer for my Daughter the coming of ruin upon civilization still preoccupies Yeats: "Imagining in excited reverie/ That the future years had come, / Dancing to a frenzied drum, / Out of the murderous innocence of the sea". But the poem does move from the personal to the general and somehow philosophical issues. It moves through description of the place; we also recognize the symbolic ideals of a good culture: the tower, the laurel tree and custom and ceremony. The poem moves from the real concern of violence of the times; it describes the poet’s mood of gloom; and then it moves to the ideal of beauty in women; and from there it moves to symbols of great love found disappointing, to Helen, Aphrodite and by implication to Maud Gonne. There is a praise of courtesy, charm, wisdom and the glad kindness (that Yeats had found in marriage) as well as a hope for merriment. Then comes the terrible denunciation of intellectual hatred and of Maud Gonne, the loveliest woman born, (whose opinionated mind is savagely attacked). The last stanzas praise innocence, and custom and ceremony. It is both relevant and meaningful in the context of the terrible violence caused by "intellectual hatred" in early twentieth century Europe, though it might sound a little 'chauvinistic' to modern readers.
It is important to read this poem alongside another famous poem by Yeats, which was actually written just a few months before this poem, "The Second Coming." In this earlier work, Yeats sets out his prophecy of doom and gloom, anticipating the "Mere anarchy" and "blood-dimmed tide" that was set loose on
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Online Class Lecture Note from Dr. S. K. Paul, Professor and Head; University Department of English; B R A Bihar University, Muzaffarpur. the world due to political changes such as the Russian Revolution and the rise of fascism. Many critics view "A Prayer for My Daughter" as being a discussion of how to live and transcend such disturbing events.
The poem begins with an account of the speaker praying for his daughter in the midst of a "howling" storm because of a "great gloom" that dominates his mind. Having effectively prophesied a massive upheaval in the world order, now that he has a daughter, Yeats is concerned about the kind of world that she will grow up in. Note how the violence of nature finds a parallel in the violence that is to come as the speaker in the second stanza imagines the future years "Dancing to a frenzied drum" as the storm rages outside.
He prays that his daughter will develop the kind of characteristics that the women he loved did not possess. His former lover, Maud Gonne, was beautiful and aware of it and also fired by nationalistic fervour. Yeats prays that his daughter, by contrast, will be given beauty, but not too much, because too much beauty can lead to vanity and an inability to relate to others. He wishes her to learn "courtesy" and hopes that she can have a life marked by stability and security, becoming a "flourishing hidden tree." Above all he wants her to marry into a home where tradition dominates, for as he says:
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.
In an uncertain world with an uncertain future, therefore, Yeats seems to argue that the disturbing changes in the world can be overcome through a life lived focusing on traditional values and the importance of human kindness.
"A Prayer for my Daughter" is a poem by William Butler Yeats written in 1919 and published in 1921 as part of Yeats' collection Michael Robartes and the
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Online Class Lecture Note from Dr. S. K. Paul, Professor and Head; University Department of English; B R A Bihar University, Muzaffarpur.
Dancer. It is written to Anne, his daughter with Georgie Hyde Lees, whom Yeats married after his last marriage proposal to Maud Gonne, was rejected in 1916. Yeats wrote the poem while staying in a tower at Thoor Ballylee during the Anglo-Irish War, two days after Anne's birth on February 26, 1919. The poem reflects Yeats's complicated views on Irish Nationalism, sexuality, and is considered an important work of Modernist poetry.
The poem begins by describing "storm" which is a "howling", and his newborn daughter, sleeping "half hid" in her cradle, and protected somewhat from the storm. The storm, which can in part be read as symbolizing the Irish War of Independence, overshadows the birth of Yeats' daughter and creates the political frame that sets the text into historical context. In stanza two, the setting for the poem is revealed as being "the tower", a setting for many of Yeats's poems, including the book of poems entitled The Tower (1928). This is Thoor Ballylee, an ancient Norman tower in Galway, which Yeats had bought in 1917 and where he intended making a home.
Conflicts between Ireland and the United Kingdom were common subjects of Yeats' poetry, including his notable poems about the Dublin Lockout ("September 1913") and the Easter Rising ("Easter 1916"). David Holdeman suggests that this poem "carries over from 'The Second Coming'" in the tone it uses to describe the political situation facing Ireland at the end of World War One and with the formation of the Irish Republican Army.
The poem contains ten stanzas of eight lines each: two rhymed couplets followed by a quatrain of enclosed rhyme. Many of the rhyme pairs use slant rhyme. The stanza may be seen as a variation on ottava rima, an eight-lined stanza used in other Yeats poems, such as Among School Children and Sailing to Byzantium.
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Online Class Lecture Note from Dr. S. K. Paul, Professor and Head; University Department of English; B R A Bihar University, Muzaffarpur.
Metrical analysis of the poem, according to Robert Einarsson, proves difficult because he believes Yeats adheres to "rhythmical motifs" rather than traditional use of syllables in his meter. In stanza two, Einarsson points out instances where the meter of the poem contains examples of amphibrachic, pyrrhicretic, and spondaic feet. He argues that the complexity of Yeats's verse follows patterns of its "metremes", or rhymical motifs, rather than common metrical devices.
The poem also may be read to consist of straightforward iambic verse that relies on common metrical devices such as elision, a cephalous lines, promotion, and metrical inversion. Lines 1, 2, 3, 5, and 8 of each stanza are iambic pentameter; lines 4, 6, and 7 are iambic tetrameter. For instance, using traditional principles of scansion, stanza two may be scanned as shown below, where syllables in all caps represent metrical beats, lower-case syllables represent metrical off-beats, the vertical bar represents the termination of a metrical foot, and apostrophes represent elisions. The number of metrical feet per line is marked in parentheses at the end of each line.
As the poem reflects Yeats's expectations for his young daughter, feminist critiques of the poem have questioned the poet's general approach to women through the text's portrayal of women in society. In Yeats's Ghosts, Brenda Maddox suggests that the poem is "designed deliberately to offend women" and labels it as "offensive". Maddox argues that Yeats, in the poem, condemns his daughter to adhere to 19th-century ideals of womanhood, as he focuses on her need for a husband and a "Big House" with a private income.
Joyce Carol Oates suggests that Yeats used the poem to deprive his daughter of sensuality as he envisions a "crushingly conventional" view of womanhood, wishing her to become a "flourishing hidden tree" instead of allowing her the
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Online Class Lecture Note from Dr. S. K. Paul, Professor and Head; University Department of English; B R A Bihar University, Muzaffarpur. freedoms given to male children. This was after Yeats was rejected in marriage by Maud Gonne. In Oates' opinion, Yeats wishes his daughter to become like a "vegetable: immobile, unthinking, and placid.”
Majorie Elizabeth Howes, in Yeats's Nations, suggests that the crisis facing the Anglo-Irish community in "A Prayer for My Daughter" is that of female sexual choice. But, she also argues that to read the poem without the political context surrounding the Irish Revolution robs the text of a deeper meaning that goes beyond the relationship between Yeats and the female sex.
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