CELT document E910001-065

A Prayer for my Daughter

William Butler Yeats

Whole text

     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.
  4.  p.191
  5. 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.
  6. 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.
  7. 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.
  8. 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.
  9.  p.192
  10. 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?
  11. 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.
  12. 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.

Document details

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Title statement

Title (uniform): A Prayer for my Daughter

Author: William Butler Yeats

Responsibility statement

Electronic edition compiled and proof-read by: Beatrix Färber

Funded by: School of History, University College, Cork

Edition statement

1. First draft.

Extent: 1115 words

Publication statement

Publisher: CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts: a project of University College, Cork

Address: College Road, Cork, Ireland—http://www.ucc.ie/celt

Date: 2014

Distributor: CELT online at University College, Cork, Ireland.

CELT document ID: E910001-065

Availability: The works by W. B. Yeats are in the public domain. This electronic text is available with prior consent of the CELT programme for purposes of private or academic research and teaching.

Notes statement

This poem was written between February and June 1919 and first published in Poetry in November 1919 (A. Norman Jeffares, p. 244).

Source description

Literature (a small selection)

  1. W. B. Yeats, The Autobiography of William Butler Yeats, consisting of Reveries over childhood and youth, The trembling of the veil, and Dramatis personae (New York 1938).
  2. Richard Ellmann, Yeats: The Man and the Masks. Corrected edition with a new preface (Oxford 1979). [First published New York 1948; reprinted London 1961.]
  3. Peter Allt and Russell K. Alspach, The Variorum Edition of the Poems of W.B. Yeats (New York: Macmillan 1957).
  4. W. B. Yeats, Essays and Introductions (New York: Macmillan 1961).
  5. W. B. Yeats, Explorations: selected by Mrs W. B. Yeats (London/New York: Macmillan 1962).
  6. Richard Ellmann, The Identity of Yeats (New York 1964).
  7. A. Norman Jeffares, A New Commentary on the Poems of W.B. Yeats (Stanford 1984).
  8. A general bibliography is available online at the official web site of the Nobel Prize. See: http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1923/yeats-bibl.html

The edition used in the digital edition

Yeats, William Butler (1991). ‘A Prayer for my Daughter’. In: The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats‍. Ed. by Richard J. Finneran. London: Macmillan Press, pp. 190–192.

You can add this reference to your bibliographic database by copying or downloading the following:

@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

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Project description: CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts

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Interpretation: Names of persons (given names), and places are not tagged. Terms for cultural and social roles are not tagged.

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Creation:

Date: 1919

Language usage

  • The poem is in English. (en)

Keywords: literary; poetry; W. B. Yeats; 20c

Revision description

(Most recent first)

  1. 2014-05-01: File parsed and validated; SGML and HTML files created. (ed. Beatrix Färber)
  2. 2014-05-01: Structural markup applied according to CELT practice; TEI header created with bibliographical detail. (ed. Beatrix Färber)
  3. 1996: First proofing. (ed. Students at the CELT Project, UCC)
  4. 1996: Text captured (data capture Donnchadh Ó Corráin)

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