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Wednesday, April 17, 2019

A Prayer for my Daughter - W. B. Yeats









A Prayer for my Daughter


William Butler 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.





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,


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?


Ceremony’s a name for the rich horn,


And custom for the spreading laurel tree.

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