A Prayer for My Daughter (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: William Butler Yeats
- First Published: 1919
- Type of Work: Lyric
- Genres: Poetry, Lyric poetry
- Subjects: Freedom, Children, Parents and children, Love or romance, Revolutions, Marriage, 1910’s, Violence, Fathers, Self-confidence, Existentialism, Rites or ceremonies, Ireland or Irish people, Happiness, Prayers
The Poem
Anne Butler Yeats, the poet’s first child, was born on February 26, 1919, only a month after William Butler Yeats completed “The Second Coming,” his apocalyptic vision of violence and anarchy. Four months later, he composed “A Prayer for My Daughter,” in which he expanded his belief that a return to tradition and ceremony remained the single means of avoiding the earlier poem’s “blood-dimmed tide” now “loosed upon the world.” Yeats prays that his daughter may cultivate self-regard and independence and that she may marry into a home that respects...
[The entire page is 1520 words long]
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