One of the finest poem of Yeats, now at your glance to provide some ideas before reading the poem...

1. A PRAYER
FOR MY DAUGHTER
Assistant Professor,
Indo -American College, Cheyyar.
Available @ : 9751660760
E-mail: rajmohan251@gmail.com

2. Educated at: Erasmus school, London.
Friends: G.B.Shaw, Oscar Wilde & Maud Gonne.
Born on: June 13, 1865 near Dublin
in a cultured Irish family.
Died on: June 28, 1939 France (73).
Parents: John Butler Yeats &
Susan Mary Pollexfen.
Married Georgiana Hyde Lees in1917.
His style is
Essentially
symbolistic,
Master of
Traditional
Verses.
Peak of his achievement in poetry,
The Towers (1928) The winding stair
and Other poems (1933) Yeats wrote
20 plays. Concern with Irish Theatre
lacks with essential qualities as a
dramatist.
In December 1923, Yeats
was awarded the Nobel
Prize for Literature.

3. The poet is worried that his infant
daughter has to face the challenges
and hardships of the future and how
best would she be able to fight them.
A Prayer for My Daughter is a
beautiful personal poem by William
Butler Yeats reflecting his gloomy
mood and a fear of disturbing future.
The poem was composed in 1919 and
appeared in 1921 in the collection
Michael Robartes and the Dancer.
Though the war ended but Ireland was
still in disturbance. William Butler Yeats’
daughter Anne was born that time and
the poet was worried for her future.
About the Poem:
The title of
the poem is
very
suggestive
and
meaningful
It was written during the World
War I, thus it reflects the post-
war agitation that was prevalent
during that time.
The poet suggests some
characteristics that she must
undertake which can sustain her
future and keep her safe and happy.
He wants his daughter to become a
woman who is Virtuous and Wise.

4. ☺A Prayer for My Daughter opens with an image of the newborn
child sleeping in a cradle. A storm is raging with great fury outside
the residence.
☺A great gloom and anxiety is on Yeats’s mind is about how to
protect his child from the tide of hard times ahead.
☺The poet keeps walking and praying for the young child and as
he does so he is in a state of reverie.
☺Yeats wants his daughter to possess some qualities so that she
can face the future years independently and with confidence.
☺He wishes that his daughter be given beauty, but her beauty
should not make her proud or distract a stranger’s mind and eyes.
Summary:

5. Summary:
☺He thinks that beauty is capable of making proud and pride
which leads to losing natural kindness.
☺The great is that the poem has a specific as well as general applicability.
☺The poem makes an indirect reference to Maud Gonne whom
Yeats loved so much and yet could not win her hand.
☺The poet looks within himself and finds that there is hatred inside. He
thinks that hatred kills innocence; wishes his daughter should not
harbour hatred.
☺The poet’s 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.
☺In the end, the poem is a prayer for order and grace in a
battered civilization.

6. Poetry Analysis:
The poet juxtaposes ideas of domesticity
and political import; innocence and
murderousness; rationale and sentiment.
The poem presents the image of a child
who sleeps soundly through a
thunderous storm. The child referred to
here is Anne Butler Yeats.
The storm born on the Atlantic Ocean is
emblematic of the larger violence of the Irish
War of Independence. The external unrest is a
concretization of the poet’s internal trauma.
The image of the child sleeping
innocently by the haystack evocatively
signifies the image of Christ.

7. Poetry Analysis:
Yeats reiterates that she should not
break a stranger’s heart; thereby
evolving into another Maud Gonne.
The 'Horn of Plenty' or 'Cornucopia' according to
mythology is the horn of a goat that is depicted as
- overflowing with flowers, fruit and corn. It
thereby symbolizes fertility, prosperity and
procreation. Keats portrays the Horn of Plenty as
being capable of nurturing and enforcing virtues.
There is an autobiographical strain, alluding to his love for Maud Gonne. It was futile as
she turned a blind eye to him; Yeats squandered away the years in hopelessness.
Her beauty
should not
limit itself to
being skin
deep.
Excess beauty has always been unfavourable.
He exemplifies this with several references to
Greek mythology (Helen and Aphrodite).
According to the poet, fine women, are blessed with the ‘Horn of Plenty’.

8. The poet wishes that his daughter be like a
flourishing tree far from the public eye. Yeats
hopes that her thoughts will be like the linnet, and
that her songs radiate magnanimity.
Like a green laurel tree, she would remain rooted in one
place, but her goodness would branch out all around. The
colour ‘green’ emblematizes the quality of being evergreen
and fruitful.
The poet also refers to stability in a relationship here through the idea of constancy. Yeats
taunts at Maud Gonne who had two children and later went on to marry John McBride.
The speaker wants Anne to be constant to one man, unlike Maud Gonne.
The Symbol of the Flourishing Tree:
Her thoughts shall not instigate fights and create conflicts. He expects her
not to get involved in quarrels except for the sake of jest.
He wants his daughter’s bridegroom to usher her to a house, ‘house’
being a symbol of domestic well-being.
Intellectual hatred is the worst, according to Yeats, as it is not
personal/individual to be resolved easily.

9. 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.
A Prayer for My Daughter exposes the typical modernist sentiment of the poet.
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. For him, aristocracy is the
source of aesthetic, intellectual and cultural beauty. Therefore, probably because
of Nietzsche’s influence upon him.
Critical Appreciation:

10. Critical Appreciation:
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.
The poem is strikingly flexible becomes a vehicle of public speech.
The poem is decorated with a number of phrases and images
that are suggestive and evocative.
The poem is a mixture of symbols; its richness of texture is
remarkable; and is easy flow of ideas.
In this poem, the poet praises courtesy, charm, wisdom
and the glad kindness that Yeats had found in marriage.

11. What does the poet want his Daughter to become?
He wants her daughter not to have strong opinions like hatred, because he thinks that hatred
is the worst thing in the world. He hopes she will marry, and her house will be full of customs.
The poet has portrayed a way of life and would like his daughter to adopt it.
He uses the image of his daughter partly to represent his ideal woman.
Most of the images that he uses are parts of the ideal woman he has in
his mind or its opposites.
He supports that a woman should be "a flourishing
hidden tree", who is not well-known but beautiful.
She shouldn't be anything but "merry." " Innocence" is beautiful in women,
that's why if his daughter keeps her innocence inside and do not abuse it, she
will not be affected by the "wind."
He thinks that too much beauty distorts women, and causes
them to destroy the gifts that are given by "Horn of Plenty"
thus he wants his daughter to use the gifts wisely and properly.
He wants his daughter to learn the fact that "hearts are earned", and the
men, who are deceived by just beauty, will notice their mistake later.

12. Personification
“The storm is howling” represents threatening external forces
e.g. riots, evilness. “Roof-levelling” wind represents turbulent forces.
Repetition
(saying the same thing many times) - in the ninth
stanza: self-appeasing, self delighting, and self-affrighting.
Literary devices:
Symbols
“Storm” represents outside forces which threaten Anne’s safety.
“Cradle hood” represents Anne’s innocence and infancy. “Coverlid”
represents innocence and ignorance, frail protection. “Wind” represents
turbulent forces. “One bare hill” may represent Robert’s death.
Onomatopoeia
(the use of words that sound like the thing that they are
describing) - howling, scream, spray, choke, scowl, howl etc.

13. Literary devices:
Metonym - The author may be mistaken but “Atlantic” may be the USA.
Metaphor - “crazy salad” – an inferior spouse.
Paradox - “murderous innocence of the sea”
Rhyme scheme: aabbcddc
Tone: Frightening, precarious, gloomy.
Alliteration
(the use of several words together that begin with the same
sound or letter in order to make a special effect) – howling, and half
hid, cradle-hood and coverlid, great gloom, sea-wind scream, being
made beautiful, like the linnet etc.
Assonance
(similarity in the vowel sounds of words that are close
together in a poem)- walked and prayed, young-hour, such-
overmuch, trouble- fool, with-meat, yet-that-played etc.

14. The structure of the poem is not complex to analyze. It has 10
stanzas and eight lines each. It was written in iambic pentameter.
The rhyme scheme is aabbcddc, and the rhythm is regular.
The language used in the poem is like the language used in lectures
and also prayer. The word "may" gives to the poem a pray-like mood.
The narrator is the poet's himself, and he tells the poem
quite personal. He uses "I", "she", "my daughter" to
make it personalize and that is what make Diction.
The moods of the stanzas are different than the others.
The first stanza has a frightening atmosphere.
In the second stanza he is anxious about what will future bring to her.
The third one has the same mood but in here he is careful.
In the next one he uses classical mythology to express his obsessions.
The fifth one is a little bit more confident and hopeful.
The sixth one is more cautious and has a negative mood.
The seventh is self aware, strong and kind of regretful.
And the last three stanzas are written in a happy mood and have hopefulness.
Language and Structure:

15. Thank