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.
O 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.
A Prayer for My Daughter by William Butler Yeats opens with an image of the newborn child sleeping in a cradle. A storm is raging with great fury outside and so he feels anxiety as to how to protect his child from the tide of hard times ahead. He feels gloomy and worried about the future of his daughter.
He says “As I walk and pray for my younger daughter, I imagine in a state of excitement and reverie” that the future years have already come and that they seem to come dancing to the accompaniment of a drum which is beating frantically. These future years are seen by Yeats’ imagination as emerging out of the murderous innocence of the sea. In other words, the sea seems to be innocent but is capable of giving birth to those howling storms which are capable of destroy anything.
Yeats wants his daughter to possess some qualities so that she can face the future. Yeats says that make her beautiful but not so much that she feel proud and distract others. Those whose beauty is capable of making them proud consider beauty an end in itself. The result is that pride leads to their losing natural kindness. Being able to make the right choices in life is a very important thing, but those who have excessive beauty are unable to do so and never find a good friend in the true sense of the world. The great thing about the poem is that it has a specific as well as general applicability. At the same time the poem makes an indirect reference to Maud Gonne also whom Yeats loved so much and yet could not win her hand.
The poet looks within himself and finds that there is hatred inside. He thinks that hatred kills innocence and wishes that his daughter should not harbor hatred. It was because of this unwholesome bent of the mind that Maud Gonne married a fool. The poet wished that her daughter should not cultivate a frantic intellect; he thinks that her daughter can remain innocent if she is free from hatred and intellectual fanaticism. The innocence is self-delighting, self-appeasing and self-affrighting. The poet’s last wish is that his daughter should marry a person of aristocratic family who may take her to a home where tradition and ceremony fill the atmosphere.
In the end, the poem is a prayer for order and grace in a battered civilization. Behind the prayer, of course, are Yeats’ bitter memories of Maud Gonne who had come to stand for the tragedy of how beauty and grace can be distorted by politics, intellectual hatred and arrogance.
'The Old Woman' is simple and short poem by Joseph Campbell where he compares old woman with different things and describes her. The poem has three stanzas. .In the first stanza , the poet compares the old lady with the white candle. White colour is symbol of peace and candle is symbol of light. The old woman is like white candle. She is in peace and she gives other people light by his experiences. She is able to show right path who need that. In the second stanza, the poet compares the old lady with the spent radiance of the winter's sun. It refers old woman's long life. But now she is old like winter's sun, but she has gathered a wide experience of life. Poet writes, "A woman with her travail done" In last stanza, the poet compares the old woman with the water under the ruined mill. The water is still under the ruined mill and by comparing this poet writes about the old lady that her all sons has gone, they do not live with her. But she has all the
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