Write a critical appreciation of W.B. Yeats's poem 'A Prayer for My

Write a critical appreciation of W.B. Yeats’s poem ‘A Prayer for My Daughter.’

Ans.

Introduction

A Prayer for My Daughter‘ is one of Yeats’s most celebrated poems. It was occasioned by the sight of his infant girl on a stormy day. He begot his eldest child, a daughter. in January 1919. One day, a few weeks after her birth, a storm howled outside his house in the old Norman tower called Thoor Ballylee in County Galway. The storm disturbed his mind. He looked at his infant daughter. Annie Butter Yeats, asleep in her cradle and prayed for her. Thereafter he began to compose the poem but left it unfinished. He took it up again and finished it in June 1919. Later it was published in his poetic volume of 1921, entitled Michael Roberts And The Dancer.

Subject Matter

The poem is an elaborate lyric of eighty lines. It has been divided into ten stanzas of eight verses each. The poetic thought of the poem consists of a solemn prayer for certain natural gifts in his daughter and a commentary on the heartlessness of a great beauty. The reference is indirectly to Maud Gonne’s cruelty to the poet’s love. The poem is marked by a strong protection attitude and a prayer for a balanced life of happiness for the young child. There is uncertainty and instability in the world outside, the future appears to be equally uncertain:

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.

In these circumstances, the poet prays that may the gifts of God be such as to endow the young child with qualities which would win her friends and happiness.

The poet prays for the future well being and happiness of his darling daughter. He wishes that she should have beauty but not that over much beauty which makes women vain and cruel and which makes them unappreciative even of sincere and true love.

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 may be

The heart-revealing intimacy

That chooses right, and never find a friend.

The poet wishes her to be married in an aristocratic family of traditional sanctities and manners, governed by the customary laws of courtesy. Arrogance and hatred are the qualities of the common people. The aristocratic ways of life on the other hand are rooted in custom and tradition which are the sources of all beauty and innocence.

How but in custom and in ceremony

Are innocence and beauty born?

Ceremony’s name for the rich horn,

And custom for the spreading laurel tree.

The poet wants that his daughter should be free from all hatred. If she is free from hatred she shall be innocent and free from all evil influences.

If there’s no hatred in a mind

Assault and battery of the wind

Can never tear the inner from the leaf.”

The poet feels that the intellectual hatred is the worst. It was because of the ‘opinionated mind that Maud Gonne, the most beautiful woman married a boor. The poet wishes that her daughter should remain free from the fanaticism of the intellect. The poet wishes that her own will and pleasure should be expressive of the will of Heaven. She would then be happy despite all the storms of misfortune that may strike against her innocent head, and the hostility of the world.

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 nature understood

For an old fellows full of angry mind?

He thinks that his daughter can remain innocent if she is free from the hatred and opinionated mind. The innocence is self-delighting’, ‘self appeasing’ and ‘self-affrighting.”

The poet wishes her to be married in an aristocratic family of traditional sanctities and manners, governed by the customary laws of courtesy. The poem is a manifesto of W.B. Yeats’ personal ideals in old age of settled life with a home and established status. The word ‘ceremony’ is a keyword in Yeats and in the books of courtesy. The last stanza is theoretically the most important part of the poem.

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.

Imagery

The imagery of the poem begins with the image of the wind. The image is sustained but its form is continuously changed. “Thus, the wind bred from the sea’s murderous innocence, changes startingly but convincingly into the wind of intellectual hatred. It emanates from an old bellows, exchanged for the horn of plenty, by a member of that class of opinionated idealistic whose destiny is to climb upon waggonettes to scream..”

According to Underecker, “Yeats focuses his poem on two images: the rich horn of plenty which he associates with courtesy, aristocracy, and ceremony; and he hidden laurel tree which ‘rooted in one dear perpetual place’ can provide through custom a radical innocence for the soul….” A mention of beauty gives rise to the images of Helen and Paris. Their union and the union of Venus and Hephaestus bring to our mind the union of Maud Gonne and Mac Bride.

Stanza- form and rhyme – The poem consists of eighty lines. They have been divided into ten stanzas of eight lines each. The first four verses of each stanza make up two rhymed couplets. But among the last four lines of each, the first verse rhymes with the fourth, the second with the third.

My mind, because the minds that I have loved-a

The sort of beauty that I have approved, – a

Prosper but little, has dried up of late, -b

Yet knows that to be choked with hate-b

May well be of all evil chances chief-c

If there’s no hatred in a mind-d

Assault and battery of the wind-d

Can never tear the linnet from the leaf-c

Diction and Style

The Diction of the poem is simple, urban, and literary. But polysyllabic words have been employed freely so that the lyric has become an elaborate one. They have also made the stanzas heavier than those of a fluid lyric. Words like ‘intellectual hatred’, ‘opinionated’, ‘considering, magnanimities’, ‘accustomed’, and ‘ceremonious’ dull the verses to the tune of prosaic and flat lines. The style of the poem is modern with an under current of romanticism.

Stephen Spender’s Criticism of the poem

Some critics say that the poem is based on triviality for the poet has not laid down or desired for his daughter a way of life consistent with the highest religious or moral ideals. He has not prayed for any Christian virtues for her. Stephen Spender writes, “Reverent as he is, he does not convey any religion: instead, we are offered …. an aristocratic faith.” However such criticism is not very correct. The poet does desire for his daughter organic innocence and freedom from hatred. The ideals which he upholds are practical ideals and these can be easily translated into practice and a state of grace attained. He has laid down a way of life based on high moral virtues.

Conclusion

Mr. Jeffares points out that the poem has wonderful flexibility. This poem shows the flexibility he was achieving. It can move through description of the place we are beginning to recognize, the tower, it can freely describe the poet’s mood of gloom and them move to the idea of beauty in women, from there to symbols of love etc.

The poet has modified his views where his hopes for his daughter’s life are concerned. He puts out of his mind, as R.P. Blackmur says, his magical philosophy, all the struggle and warfare of the intellect in order to imagine his daughter living in innocence and beauty, custom and ceremony.

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.