A Prayer For My Daughter Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABCAAAA DDEEFGGF AAHHAFFA BIJJKAAL AABIMAAN FFAAOBBO AAAAPAAP AAQQAAAA RSMMCTTC UUUUFQQFOnce more the storm is howling and half hid | A |
Under this cradle hood and coverlid | A |
My child sleeps on There is no obstacle | B |
But Gregory's wood and one bare hill | C |
Whereby the haystack and roof levelling wind | A |
Bred on the Atlantic can be stayed | A |
And for an hour I have walked and prayed | A |
Because of the great gloom that is in my mind | A |
- | |
I have walked and prayed for this young child an hour | D |
And heard the sea wind scream upon the tower | D |
And under the arches of the bridge and scream | E |
In the elms above the flooded stream | E |
Imagining in excited reverie | F |
That the future years had come | G |
Dancing to a frenzied drum | G |
Out of the murderous innocence of the sea | F |
- | |
May she be granted beauty and yet not | A |
Beauty to make a stranger's eye distraught | A |
Or hers before a looking glass for such | H |
Being made beautiful overmuch | H |
Consider beauty a sufficient end | A |
Lose natural kindness and maybe | F |
The heart revealing intimacy | F |
That chooses right and never find a friend | A |
- | |
Helen being chosen found life flat and dull | B |
And later had much trouble from a fool | I |
While that great Queen that rose out of the spray | J |
Being fatherless could have her way | J |
Yet chose a bandy legg d smith for man | K |
It's certain that fine women eat | A |
A crazy salad with their meat | A |
Whereby the Horn of plenty is undone | L |
- | |
In courtesy I'd have her chiefly learned | A |
Hearts are not had as a gift but hearts are earned | A |
By those that are not entirely beautiful | B |
Yet many that have played the fool | I |
For beauty's very self has charm made wisc | M |
And many a poor man that has roved | A |
Loved and thought himself beloved | A |
From a glad kindness cannot take his eyes | N |
- | |
May she become a flourishing hidden tree | F |
That all her thoughts may like the linnet be | F |
And have no business but dispensing round | A |
Their magnanimities of sound | A |
Nor but in merriment begin a chase | O |
Nor but in merriment a quarrel | B |
O may she live like some green laurel | B |
Rooted in one dear perpetual place | O |
- | |
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 | A |
Yet knows that to be choked with hate | A |
May well be of all evil chances chief | P |
If there's no hatred in a mind | A |
Assault and battery of the wind | A |
Can never tear the linnet from the leaf | P |
- | |
An intellectual hatred is the worst | A |
So let her think opinions are accursed | A |
Have I not seen the loveliest woman born | Q |
Out of the mouth of plenty's horn | Q |
Because of her opinionated mind | A |
Barter that horn and every good | A |
By quiet natures understood | A |
For an old bellows full of angry wind | A |
- | |
Considering that all hatred driven hence | R |
The soul recovers radical innocence | S |
And learns at last that it is self delighting | M |
Self appeasing self affrighting | M |
And that its own sweet will is Heaven's will | C |
She can though every face should scowl | T |
And every windy quarter howl | T |
Or every bellows burst be happy Still | C |
- | |
And may her bridegroom bring her to a house | U |
Where all's accustomed ceremonious | U |
For arrogance and hatred are the wares | U |
Peddled in the thoroughfares | U |
How but in custom and in ceremony | F |
Are innocence and beauty born | Q |
Ceremony's a name for the rich horn | Q |
And custom for the spreading laurel tree | F |
William Butler Yeats
(2)
Poem topics: , Print This Poem , Rhyme Scheme
Submit Spanish Translation
Submit German Translation
Submit French Translation
Write your comment about A Prayer For My Daughter poem by William Butler Yeats
Best Poems of William Butler Yeats