A Prayer For My Daughter

Hello readers! The blog is part of my B.A. journey. It is about the poem. 

"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 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 26 February 1919. The poem reflects Yeats's complicated views on Irish Nationalism, sexuality, and is considered an important work of Modernist poetry.

The Irish poet William Butler Yeats wrote “A Prayer for my Daughter” in 1919, two days after the birth of his daughter, Anne, and included it in his 1921 collection, Michael Robartes and the Dancer. In the poem, a speaker (usually read as Yeats himself) prays about the type of woman he hopes his daughter will become and the kind of life he hopes she will have. At its core, the poem expresses a father's heartfelt wishes for his newborn daughter. In a larger sense, "A Prayer for my Daughter" is a rich, complex reflection on the joys and struggles of parenthood, Irish politics, and Yeats's own past.

In “A Prayer for My Daughter,” the speaker imagines the woman he hopes his infant daughter will become: someone who's pretty, independent, and intelligent, but also demure, pleasant, and obedient. His prayers reflect both his hopes for his daughter and his take on womanhood in general; to this speaker, living a happy life as a woman means living life well within the confines of social convention. He believes that fulfilling the ideals of traditional femininity is how women can survive the stormy dangers of the world.

The speaker makes this prayer for his daughter in the first place because he feels that women are particularly vulnerable to the world's dangers and difficulties. The storm that howls at the poem’s start symbolizes those dangers, which threaten the speaker’s infant daughter “half hid” in her cradle. Women, the speaker believes, must protect themselves—or, really, find someone to protect them—from the “[a]ssault and battery” of the unpredictable winds of life.

To do so, the speaker believes that women must tread a careful path within the bounds of social convention. In other words, they should try to live up to traditional (if often conflicting) feminine ideals.

The speaker thus says that women should be beautiful, but not so beautiful that they become vain or make men "distraught." Women should be courteous and pleasant, free from "hatred" and filled with "radical innocence," yet also "wise" enough to catch foolish men's eyes. They should know how to "earn[]" another's heart, but lack headstrong opinions that might lead them astray from what (the men in their lives think) is best for them. They should dispense plenty of happy thoughts and never seriously argue with someone else. In essence, women should be attractive yet humble, charming yet demure, independent yet submissive.

All of this is in service, it seems, of finding a "bridegroom" who will look after them in a "ceremonious" home far from the "arrogance and hatred" of the common world. The speaker’s ultimate hope that his daughter “become a flourishing hidden tree” further emphasizes his belief that women should be encouraged to grow and prosper in a controlled and even secretive environment, protected by social convention from the dangers and indignities of the world.

Though this all seems limiting and sexist by today’s standards, the poem nonetheless expresses a tender hope that the speaker's daughter will find happiness and peace. Even as the speaker asserts women’s need for isolation, protection, and restraint, he also honors their dignity, power, and beauty. In the speaker’s view, this traditional path lets femininity blossom and offers women a life of happiness and stability. If the speaker’s daughter follows such a path, he argues, she will learn that her soul is “self-delighting”—in other words, fulfilling such "ceremony" and "custom" is its own reward.

By this point, readers might start to sense that this storm is not just a literal one, but also symbolic of the worldly dangers that await the speaker's daughter. Yeats's first child, a daughter named Anne, was born just two days before this poem was written, in 1919, and readers can assume that the poem evokes his personal anxieties as a new parent.

The speaker, for his part, is clearly aware of his daughter's vulnerability to this storm, worrying that "[t]here is no obstacle" apart from a nearby forest and a single "bare hill" to shelter their residence from the violent weather. ("Gregory's wood" refers to an actual forest on the estate of Lady Gregory, Yeats's close friend and literary associate.) The storm outside has gotten this speaker pretty worked up, and he paces and prays anxiously "[b]ecause of the great gloom that is in my mind."

This eight-line stanza also establishes the poem's rhyme scheme, which runs AABBCDDC, and meter, which is a loose mixture of iambic pentameter and tetrameter. An iamb is a poetic foot with a da-dum rhythm; pentameter means there are five of these iambs per line, while tetrameter means there are just four. This meter adds some steadiness and rhythm to the poem, though Yeats stretches and plays with the meter a lot.