"Prayer for My Daughter" is a poem by William Butler Yeats written in 1919 and published in 1921 as part of Yeats' collection of Michael Robartes and the Dancer. It was written for Anne, her daughter with Georgie Hyde Lees, who married Yeats after her last marriage proposal to Maud Gonne was rejected in 1916. Yeats wrote the poem while living in a tower at Thoor Ballylee during the Anglo-Irish War, two days after Anne's birth on February 26, 1919. The poem reflects Yeats's elaborate view of Irish Nationalism, sexuality, and is considered an important work of Modernist poetry.
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The poem begins by describing the "storm" which is "howling", and his newborn daughter, sleeping "half hiding" in his crib, and sheltered somewhat from the storm. The storm, partially legible as a symbol of the Irish Independence War, overshadowed the birth of Yeats' daughter and created a political framework that sets the text into its historical context. In the second verse, the setting for the poem is revealed as a "tower", the setting for many of Yeats' poetry, including the book of poems entitled The Tower (1928). This is Thoor Ballylee, the ancient Norman tower in Galway, purchased by Yeats in 1917 and where he intends to house.
The conflict between Ireland and England was the general subject of Yeats' poetry, including his famous poems about Dublin Lockout ("September 1913") and Easter Rising ("Easter 1916"). David Holdeman points out that this poem "brings off 'The Second Coming'" in a tone used to describe the political situation facing Ireland at the end of World War One and with the establishment of the Irish Republican Army.
Maps A Prayer for My Daughter
Structure
The poem contains ten stanzas of each line: two rhyme stanzas followed by a closed poem. Many couples use rhymes. This verse can be seen as a variation on rima ottava, eight-line stanza used in other Yeats poems, such as Among School Children and Sailing to Byzantium.
The analysis of poetry metrics, according to Robert Einarsson, proved difficult because he believed Yeats embraced a "rhythmic motif" rather than the use of traditional syllables in his measure. In stanza two, Einarsson shows an example where the poetry meter contains examples of amphibrachic, pyrrhicretic, and spondaic legs. He argues that the complexity of the verse of Yeats follows its "metremes" patterns, or rhymical motifs, rather than ordinary matrix devices.
The poem can also be read to consist of direct iambic verses that depend on common devices such as elision, acephalous lines, promotion, and geometric inversion. Lines 1, 2, 3, 5, and 8 of each stanza are iambic pentameter; lines 4, 6, and 7 are iambic tetrameters. For example, using the traditional principles of development, the two stanza can be scanned as shown below, where the syllables in all caps represent metric beats, the lower syllables represent off-beats metric, the vertical bar is the termination of the metric foot, and apostrophes represent elision. The number of geometric feet per row is indicated by brackets at the end of each line:
I REMOVE WALKED | and PAID | for THIS | Young children HOURS (5)
and HEARD | SEA- | wind PROVIDED | upON | TOWER, (5)
and UND- | er th'ARCH- | ice OF | BRIDGE, | and SCREAM (5)
in th'ELMS | aBOVE | FLOOD- | ed STREAM; (4)
imAG- | 'ning IN | exCIT- | ed REV- | erIE (5)
IT | FUT- | ure YEAR | has COME, (4)
DANC- | ing TO | a FRENZ- | IED DRUM, (4)
OUT OF MURD- | 'rous INN- | Ocence OF | sea. (5)
Critical reception
When the poem reflects Yeats' wish for his young daughter, feminist criticism of the poem has questioned the common approach of poets to women through the portrayal of texts on women in society. In Ghost Yeats , Brenda Maddox pointed out that the poem was "designed to offend women" and labeled her as "offensive". Maddox argues that Yeats, in that poem, cursed his daughter for obeying the ideals of nineteenth-century womanhood, as she focused on her need for a husband and a "Great House" with personal income.
Joyce Carol Oates points out that Yeats used the poem to rob her daughter of sensuality when she imagined a "devastating" feminine outlook, hoping that she would be a "hidden tree of growth" rather than giving her the freedom given to a boy. This was after Yeats was rejected in marriage by Maud Gonne. In the opinion of Oates, Yeats wants her daughter to be like "vegetables: not moving, not thinking, and calm."
Majorie Elizabeth Howes, at Yeats's Nations, states that the crisis facing Anglo-Irish community in "A Prayer for My Daughter" is a sexual choice of women. But he also argues that reading poetry without the political context surrounding the Irish Revolution robs the text of a deeper meaning that transcends the relationship between Yeats and the female gender.
See also
- 1921 in poetry
Note
References
- Maddox, Brenda. Ghost Yeats . HarperCollins, (2000)
- Oates, Joyce Carol. "At least I have made a woman of her: The image of women in 20th century literature", The Georgia Review # 37 (1983) pp.Ã, 7-30
- Einarsson, Robert. Conference Paper, Graduate Research Symposium . Edmonton, Graduate Students Association. University of Alberta. p.Ã, 26 [1]
- Holderman, David. Introduction to Cambridge for W.B. Yeats, Cambridge University Press (2006)
- Ferrall, Charles. The Politics of Modern and Reactionary Writing , Cambridge University Press (2001)
- Howes, Marjorie Elizabeth. Yeats's Nations , Cambridge University Press (1998)
External links
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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