A Prayer for my Daughter
Encyclopedia
William Butler Yeats
William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and playwright, and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years he served as an Irish Senator for two terms...
written in 1919 and published in 1921 as part of Yeats' collection Michael Robartes and the Dancer
Michael Robartes and the Dancer
Michael Robartes and the Dancer is a 1921 book of poems by William Butler Yeats.It includes the poems:# Michael Robartes and the Dancer# Solomon And The Witch# An Image From A Past Life# Under Saturn# Easter, 1916# Sixteen Dead Men# The Rose Tree...
. It is written to Anne
Anne Yeats
Anne Butler Yeats was an Irish painter and stage designer. She was a daughter of the poet William Butler Yeats and a niece of the painter Jack B. Yeats, niece of Lily Yeats an embroiderer associated with the Celtic Revival, and botanic artist Elizabeth Yeats...
, the daughter of Yeats and Georgie Hyde Lees, whom Yeats married after his last marriage proposal to Maud Gonne
Maud Gonne
Maud Gonne MacBride was an English-born Irish revolutionary, feminist and actress, best remembered for her turbulent relationship with William Butler Yeats. Of Anglo-Irish stock and birth, she was won over to Irish nationalism by the plight of evicted people in the Land Wars...
was rejected in 1916. Yeats wrote the poem while staying in a tower at Thoor Ballylee
Thoor Ballylee
Thoor Ballylee Castle, a fortified, 13th century, Norman tower built by the septs de Burgo, or Burke, lies in County Galway near the town of Gort located off the Galway-Ennis road. With four floors, the tower consists of one room on each floor that is connected by a spiral stone stairway built into...
during the Anglo-Irish War, two days after Anne's birth on February 26, 1919. The poem reflects Yeats's complicated views on Irish Nationalism
Irish nationalism
Irish nationalism manifests itself in political and social movements and in sentiment inspired by a love for Irish culture, language and history, and as a sense of pride in Ireland and in the Irish people...
, sexuality
Human sexuality
Human sexuality is the awareness of gender differences, and the capacity to have erotic experiences and responses. Human sexuality can also be described as the way someone is sexually attracted to another person whether it is to opposite sexes , to the same sex , to either sexes , or not being...
, and is considered an important work of Modernist poetry
Modernist poetry in English
Modernist poetry in English is generally considered to have emerged in the early years of the 20th century with the appearance of the Imagists. In common with many other modernists, these poets wrote in reaction to the perceived excesses of Victorian poetry, with its emphasis on traditional...
.
Background
The poem begins by describing a "storm" which is "howling, and his newborn daughter, sleeping "half hid" in her cradle, thus protected somewhat from the storm. The storm, which describes the Irish War of IndependenceIrish War of Independence
The Irish War of Independence , Anglo-Irish War, Black and Tan War, or Tan War was a guerrilla war mounted by the Irish Republican Army against the British government and its forces in Ireland. It began in January 1919, following the Irish Republic's declaration of independence. Both sides agreed...
, overshadows the birth of Yeats's daughter and creates the political frame that sets the text into historical context. In stanza two, the setting for the poem is revealed as being a "tower", a setting for many of Yeats's poems including the book of poems titled The Tower
The Tower (book)
The Tower was a book of poems by William Butler Yeats, published in 1928.The title, which the book shares with the second poem, refers to the Thoor Ballylee castle which Yeats purchased and lived in for some time with his family....
published in 1928. Conflicts between Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
and the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
were common subjects of Yeats's poetry as he wrote famous poems about the Dublin Lockout
Dublin Lockout
The Dublin Lock-out was a major industrial dispute between approximately 20,000 workers and 300 employers which took place in Ireland's capital city of Dublin. The dispute lasted from 26 August 1913 to 18 January 1914, and is often viewed as the most severe and significant industrial dispute in...
("September 1913") and the Easter Rising
Easter Rising
The Easter Rising was an insurrection staged in Ireland during Easter Week, 1916. The Rising was mounted by Irish republicans with the aims of ending British rule in Ireland and establishing the Irish Republic at a time when the British Empire was heavily engaged in the First World War...
("Easter 1916").David Holdeman suggests that the poem "carries over from 'The Second Coming'" in the tone it uses to describe the political situation facing Ireland at the end of World War One
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
the formation of the Irish Republican Army
Irish Republican Army
The Irish Republican Army was an Irish republican revolutionary military organisation. It was descended from the Irish Volunteers, an organisation established on 25 November 1913 that staged the Easter Rising in April 1916...
.
Structure
The poem itself contains ten stanzaStanza
In poetry, a stanza is a unit within a larger poem. In modern poetry, the term is often equivalent with strophe; in popular vocal music, a stanza is typically referred to as a "verse"...
s of eight lines each. The first two lines of each stanza form a rhyming couplet
Couplet
A couplet is a pair of lines of meter in poetry. It usually consists of two lines that rhyme and have the same meter.While traditionally couplets rhyme, not all do. A poem may use white space to mark out couplets if they do not rhyme. Couplets with a meter of iambic pentameter are called heroic...
, but the following lines of each stanza alternate rhyme scheme
Rhyme scheme
A rhyme scheme is the pattern of rhyme between lines of a poem or song. It is usually referred to by using letters to indicate which lines rhyme. In other words, it is the pattern of end rhymes or lines...
s throughout the poem. Metrical analysis of the poem, according to Robert Einarsson, proves difficult because he believes Yeats adheres to "rhythmical motifs" rather than traditional use of syllables in his meter. In stanza two, Einarsson points out instances where the meter of the poem contains examples of amphibrachic, pyrrhic
Pyrrhic
A pyrrhic is a metrical foot used in formal poetry. It consists of two unaccented, short syllables. It is also known as a dibrach.Tennyson used pyrrhics and spondees quite frequently, for example, in In Memoriam: "When the blood creeps and the nerves prick." "When the" and "and the" in the second...
retic, and spondaic
Spondee
In poetry, a spondee is a metrical foot consisting of two long syllables, as determined by syllable weight in classical meters, or two stressed syllables, as determined by stress in modern meters...
feet
Foot (prosody)
The foot is the basic metrical unit that generates a line of verse in most Western traditions of poetry, including English accentual-syllabic verse and the quantitative meter of classical ancient Greek and Latin poetry. The unit is composed of syllables, the number of which is limited, with a few...
, and he argues that the complexity of Yeats's verse follows patterns of its "metremes", or rhymical motifs, rather than common metrical devices.
Critical reception
As the poem reflects Yeats's expectations for his young daughter, feminist critques of the poem have questioned the poet's general approach to women through the text's portrayal of women in society. In Yeats's Ghosts, Brenda Maddox suggests that the poem is "designed deliberately to offend women" and labels it as "offensive". Maddox argues that Yeats, in the poem, condemns his daughter to adhere to 19th Century ideals of womanhood as he focuses on her need for a husband and a "Big House" with a private income.Joyce Carol Oates
Joyce Carol Oates
Joyce Carol Oates is an American author. Oates published her first book in 1963 and has since published over fifty novels, as well as many volumes of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction...
questions the use of a poem to deprive his daughter of sensuality after Yeats's rejected marriage proposal to Maud Gonne
Maud Gonne
Maud Gonne MacBride was an English-born Irish revolutionary, feminist and actress, best remembered for her turbulent relationship with William Butler Yeats. Of Anglo-Irish stock and birth, she was won over to Irish nationalism by the plight of evicted people in the Land Wars...
presents a "crushingly conventional" view of womanhood, wishing her to become a "flourishing hidden tree" instead of allowing her the freedoms given to male children, Yeats's, In Oates's opinion, wishes his daughter to become like a "vegetable:immobile, unthinking, and placid."
Majorie Elizabeth Howes, in Yeats's Nations suggests that the crisis facing the Anglo-Irish
Anglo-Irish
Anglo-Irish was a term used primarily in the 19th and early 20th centuries to identify a privileged social class in Ireland, whose members were the descendants and successors of the Protestant Ascendancy, mostly belonging to the Church of Ireland, which was the established church of Ireland until...
community in "A Prayer for My Daughter" is that of female sexual choice. However, Howes argues that to read the poem without the political context surrounding the Irish Revolution robs the text of a deeper meaning that goes beyond the relationship between Yeats and the female sex.