William Butler Yeats

 p.190

A Prayer for my Daughter

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
 p.191
4. 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-legged smith for man.
   It's certain that fine women eat
   A crazy salad with their meat
   Whereby the Horn of plenty is undone.
5. 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 wisc.
   And many a poor man that has roved,
   Loved and thought himself beloved,
   From a glad kindness cannot take his eyes.
6. 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.
7. 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.
 p.192
8. 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?
9. 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.
10. 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.

@incollection{E910001-065,
  author 	 = {William Butler Yeats},
  title 	 = {A Prayer for my Daughter},
  editor 	 = {Richard J. Finneran},
  booktitle 	 = {The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats},
  publisher 	 = {Macmillan Press},
  address 	 = { London},
  date 	 = {1991},
  pages 	 = {190–192}
}
 E910001-065.bib