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In our paper number six we have the twentieth century literature from 1900 to world war 2 in which we are supposed to learn Yeats poems so after classroom discussion we are assigned to do the Google classroom task regarding to this chapter here is my blog on thinking Activity in which I'm writing about Analysis of poem by Yeats A prayer for my daughter.
- “The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.”_Yeats
- William Butler yeats
(13 June 1865 - 28 January 1939 )
A Protestant of Anglo-Irish descent, Yeats was born in Sandy mount and was educated in Dublin and London, and spent childhood holidays in County Sligo. He studied poetry from an early age when he became fascinated by Irish legends and the occult. These topics feature in the first phase of his work, lasting roughly from his student days at the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin until the turn of the 20th century. His earliest volume of verse was published in 1889, and its slow-paced and lyrical poems display debts to Edmund Spenser, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and the poets of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
was an Irish poet, dramatist, writer, and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival and became a pillar of the Irish literary establishment who helped to found the Abbey Theatre, and in his later years served two terms as a Senator of the Irish Free State.
From 1900 his poetry grew more physical, realistic, and politicized. He moved away from the transcendental beliefs of his youth, though he remained preoccupied with some elements including cyclical theories of life. He had become the chief playwright for the Irish Literary Theatre in 1894 and early on promoted younger poets such as Ezra Pound. Yeats was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923, his major works include 1928's The Tower and Words for Music Perhaps and Other Poems, published in 1932.
What is pre- Raphaelite Brotherhood?
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a group of English painters, poets, and art critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Michael Rossetti, James Collinson, Frederic George Stephens, and Thomas Woolner who formed a seven-member "Brotherhood" modeled in part on the Nazarene movement. The Brotherhood was only ever a loose association and their principles were shared by other artists of the time, including Ford Madox Brown, Arthur Hughes, and Marie Spartali Stillman. Later followers of the principles of the Brotherhood included Edward Burne-Jones, William Morris, and John William Waterhouse.
This poem we've studied in our bachelor's . a prayer for my daughter is written by William Butler Yeats in 1919 and published in 1921. This poem is written for his daughter anne . The message from this poem to his daughter?
In the poem, a speaker 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.
The poem begins by describing "storm" which is a "howling", and his newborn daughter, sleeping "half hid" in her cradle, and protected somewhat from the storm.
The poem
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.
Oh, 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.The poem is structured as a poet’s appeal to God and to his daughter on how he wants her to be like, as she grows up.
Summary
The poem ‘A Prayer for My Daughter’ opens with the image of the child sleeping in a cradle half hidden by its hood. The child sleeps innocently amidst the “howling storm” outside, but Yeats couldn’t settle down due to the storm inside. The storm howling symbolizes destruction mentioned by the poet in his ‘The Second Coming’. The wind bred in Atlantic has no obstacles except the estate of Lady Gregory, referring to the poet’s patroness, and a bare hill. The direct impact of the wind, meaning to the force of the outside world, especially on his daughter, worries the poet. Because of this great gloom he walked and prayed for his daughter to be protected from the physical storm outside and the political storm brewing across Ireland. https://www.litcharts.com/poetry/william-butler-yeats/a-prayer-for-my-daughter.
Form and Structure:
Each stanza follows a regular rhyme scheme of “AABBCDDC”. The poem follows a metrical structure that alternates between “iambic pentameter” and “trochaic pentameter”.
