William Butler Yeats: A Prayer for My Daughter

Post #11 in the blog series I Read Dead People on faith and great literature. *TODAY’S POST IS IN HONOUR OF MY DAUGHTER’S BIRTHDAY, MARCH 6^th (please forgive the particularly extended length as I’ve included the entire poem below for easy reference)

Author’s Name: William Butler Yeats

Dates:    1865-1939

Country of Origin:  Ireland

Genres: Irish poet, dramatist and prose writer, Yeats was one of the greatest English-language poets of the 20th century. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923.

Brief Religious Heritage or Association:  Born in Dublin to an Irish Protestant family, his father was a clergyman’s son who became a lawyer, and then eventually turned an Irish Pre-Raphaelite painter. His mother came from a wealthy family in the milling and shipping business.

Yeats spent his early years in London and Slingo, a beautiful county on the west coast of Ireland, where his mother had grown up and which he later depicted in his poems. In 1881 the family returned to Dublin. While he grew up as a part of the Protestant Ascendancy, things began to shift in the 1890’s with the rise of nationalism and Catholicism. This political and religious upheaval profoundly shaped his life and work. Although his early work drew on the influences of Spenser and Shelley, he eventually became more drawn to Blake, and Celtic folklore and myth.

In one of the most famous obsessive love affairs in literary history, Yeats pursued the beautiful, ardent and Catholic Irish nationalist Maud Gonne, proposing to her four different times (but alas, rejected each time). She stands as a muse to much of his writing. To his horror in 1903 she married fellow nationalist John MacBride, who was later executed by the British. Yeats became a key figure in the “Irish Literary Revival”.  He went on to marry Georgie Hyde-Lees, with whom he had a daughter, Anne, and a son, Michael. It is for these children that he wrote his poems “A Prayer for my Daughter” and “A Prayer for my Son,” respectively. In the 1920’s he actually served in the Irish senate. He owns a reputation for becoming quite a ladies’ man in his older age, finding an inspiring connection, he believed, between eroticism and creativity. While his Protestant religion and biblical metaphors never left him, he incorporated these more and more into a complicated personal system of symbols also greatly influenced by the occult, Oriental mysticism and related theories such as reincarnation.

Random Fact from the Author’s Life:  His 1922 poem “The Second Coming” contains some of the most quotable and potent lines in 20^th century poetry, many of which were used by subsequent authors as book titles, e.g. Slouching towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion, and Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe.

Focus Text(s) for Discussion Here: the poem “A Prayer for my Daughter,” composed June 1919 and published 1921 in his collection Michael Robartes and the Dancer. As a point of interest, Yeats’ poem “A Prayer for my Son” is also beautiful, and very specifically evocative of the vulnerability of the Christ child, and of the might of parental love that fears not the world, but only – rightly and truly – God.

Suggested Edition of this Text/Biographies/Resources: The following books by Yeats scholar A. Norman Jeffares provide a helpful spectrum of his life and work: New Commentary on the Poems of W.B. Yeats (1984); W.B. Yeats (1988); W. B. Yeats: A New Biography by A. Norman Jeffares (2001); see also The Life of W.B. Yeats by Terence Brown (1999).

How this Text has Challenged, Inspired and Fed my Faith Walk:

Today is my daughter’s birthday. My first born child. My only girl (so far – we’ll see what the dessert baby I’m currently brewing turns out to be :)

With her entrance into the world, my heart cracked wide open. And it has never, thank God, been the same since.

It has been better, and bolder, and brighter. And more frightened, and vulnerable, and uncertain. With the rush of my intense love for her, came an unspeakable awe for how God loves us.

Yes, with her birth my fear of the world increased, along with my fear of God.

But the fear of God – the awe and the wonder and the amazing, amazing gratitude – wins out.  Yes, God’s secret wisdom sunrises over.

This beautiful, sweet, loving little girl whom God has entrusted me to mother is herself a birth-day gift unspeakable, indeed. I cannot put into words all she means to me, and to her absolutely smitten daddy. So I live through my friend-authors again, borrow their breath and sing in their verse.

With his skill and symbol, William Butler Yeats is one of my favourite poets. His writing is beautiful, moving, and I would dare say, oh so very Irish, in that gift of profound seeing, and of hypnotizing the listener into a world of enchantment, where, indeed, “a terrible beauty is born.”

Yes, Yeats owned a mottled life … His words, however, speak to me, haunt me. For while we may not agree perfectly on everything (who ever does?), the human undercurrent before God is the same.

Yeats’ poem “A Prayer for my Daughter” has entertained a controversial critical history, yet it seemed an apt choice for my reflection today, my daughter’s sixth birthday.

Considered a poem that embodies his complicated views of Irish Nationalism and sexuality, it has gained notoriety as an iconic modernist poem. Critics have approached it as a work laboring under the anxiety of social upheaval and the threat of political violence. This is an important consideration in all of Yeats’ work, but specifically here in terms of the “storm” he sees brewing about the next generation, as epitomized by his own newborn child. The poem has also greatly offended feminists, who tend to read it in light of how Yeats was imposing restrictive Victorian values on his daughter, by dictating her purity, the limitations of her intellect, and confining her to a placid domestic sphere (associations with the home as “quiet” and “tame” continue to baffle me, as a mother to young twin boys and a loving but very vocal and bossy daughter … however, I remain open to interpretation).

For my reading today, however, I would like to approach the poem simply as its title suggests: as a prayer to one’s daughter.

Just recently, I took one of my usual “prayer walks,” but this time with the specific focus of praying for my daughter at this special occasion. Yeats’ poem came to mind, as it, too, opens with a parent in prayer as he leaves the house and the sleeping babe to wander out into nature with his thoughts.

Here is Yeats’ poem. I thought you might enjoy reading it in its entirety. I circle back below the poem with the reflections I found in common between his desires for his daughter, and my own:

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-legg’d 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.

If we go back to the opening of this poem, we don’t usually associate “great gloom” with birthdays, unless, of course, we are painfully aware of growing older ourselves … but we certainly don’t tend to think of it thus with children.

However, as a parent, I have found while everything is drenched with joy – an immense joy I never fully experienced until I had the privilege of parenting – everything around me is also touched with doom.

Every thing.

There is nothing that makes one more painfully aware of mortality while still relatively young oneself, I think, than having a child.

God’s incarnation shows us that.

Once I had toddlers who insisted on putting everything in their mouths (the loose button, the one coin someone haphazardly dropped, that single wayward Barbie doll shoe, the cat …) I entered every room with my radar fully in tune for trachea-sized objects.

Summer storms that exhilarated me so in my youth now become mad scrambles for me to get everyone out of the water at the beach and huddled into safety.

Hallowe’en candy is to be inspected before digesting, floors after the bath might be too slippery, that cute rabbit in the garden might be rabid … no running by the pool, or with scissors in your hand, or a toothbrush in your mouth … remember your helmet, please – to bike, to skate, to toboggan (new law now in parts of Canada) … in our house, the boys should probably wear one 24/7 anyway.

Where will the prime minister or president lead our country? What wars will come, in which our children must serve? Who will pay our national debt? How will they fare when they grow old, and I am long gone?

What new disease will appear? Which antibiotic will cease to work? Which school has a shooter next? When is the next holocaust, Hiroshima, 911 …?

If you can worry, you can pray, our wonderful pastor Jon Korkidakis always says.

If you can worry, you can pray.

That one took a while to sink in. I try to wear it like a spiritual rubber band around my wrist – remembering to “snap” it to break a bad habit.

So the birthday cake is ready, the little gifts wrapped … excitement fills the air, as it only can amidst small children wild on sugar and eager with anticipation.

And I step out, to cease worrying, and start praying.

On my beloved daughter’s birthday, I join with Yeats in the solidarity of parental worry. On my cherished daughter’s birthday, I too, with Yeats, hand it over to prayer. And on my precious daughter’s birthday, I , too, ask for God’s protection over my child … a protection I also hope to have the wisdom and wherewithal, with God’s grace, to instill in her through her own faith walk.

These take the form of four common points of desire that resonate deeply with Yeats’ concerns for his own girl, sleeping undisturbed so fresh and new and unsuspecting – my prayer to God and my advice to my girl, as she grows in Him.

I intend “guard” to involve protection as well as cultivation: the planting, sowing, pruning, reaping and loving care of her own garden to God’s glory, and in God’s glory. The raising of her own “laurel tree”:

1. Guard your body:

As a teacher for almost two decades, I have seen so much abuse of our bodies, especially among female students. Eating disorders, self-mutilation, addictions, abuse … but it is the abuse at your own hand, the one over which you have the most “relative” control, which is the most painful, I think, the most devastating.

God tells us that our bodies are temples by which to worship Him. The Holy Spirit dwells within us, and we acknowledge that innate holiness by how we treat our bodies, and those of others, for we are all one in the body of Christ:

“Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price.  Therefore honor God with your body.” (NIV, 1Cor 6:19-20).

And as the physical body will enjoy resurrection, in whatever mysterious way that entails, we know that our bodies are important – not in superficial ways, but in ways that run very, very deep.

Yeats’ reference to her daughter as a laurel tree evokes the myth of Daphne and Apollo. In this story, Apollo, enflamed by Cupid with an obsessive love for the beautiful river nymph Daphne, pursues her with the intent of raping her. The terrified Daphne begs for her father’s intervention. Her father, Peneus, is a Thessalian river God, and in response to her plea, he transforms his daughter into a laurel tree (Daphne is the Greek name for laurel).

Laurels represent victory, triumph and fame. For examples, wreaths made of laurel crowned winners in the early Olympic games, and esteemed artists (e.g. poet “laureates”). They were also known as remedies against poison, and tokens of peace. As a tree, laurels are unique. They are neither deciduous nor coniferous, for though they are evergreens, they are not cone-bearing (acacias and eucalyptus share the same category). In a mythic sense, Yeats casts himself as a sort of Peneus to Daphne, wishing to protect her and cast her innocence into a peace everlasting.

I don’t think this act by Peneus/Yeats need necessarily be read in a condescending or controlling way. Guarded innocence differs from naivete. There is nothing naïve, I have found when I look to other thoughtful believers I admire, about cultivating a righteous heart. Jesus himself warns His followers that the world without faith is a predatory one. A loving Father desires that His children not be exploited, even by His other children who know not what they do.

Virginity has far more meanings than merely the sexual.

And, finally, I pray my daughter, too, does not get caught up in the extremification of beauty or related superficial trappings at the loss of her own identity.

Everything around her in culture and media try to convince her of the opposite, but I pray that she roots her own security firmly in God and in the knowledge that she is already loved and accepted and beautiful beyond measure. I pray she owns confidence in every aspect of herself, inner and outer, as a beloved child of ours and, more importantly, of God. I pray that she will not be distracted by a world desperate to tell her otherwise, a world that does not operate according to abundant, amazing and unquantifiable grace, but to limited and limiting measurements and judgments.

Like Yeats, I, too, pray that she will not find herself lonely because of a preoccupation with herself.

And I pray for her loving Father’s protection from manipulation by others who mean to have her serve their own self-preoccupations.

2. Guard your heart:

This desire, that my daughter guard her heart, goes hand in hand with the above in regards to her body. But it also runs deeper. If our heart is God’s first, then it remains right first, and everything else falls into place. Bitterness, envy, anger, hatred … indeed all these things vie for your hearts. We must do battle everyday to keep them first and foremost for God, and filled with God.

3. Guard your mind:

Personally, a lifetime in academia has only convinced me further as to why Jesus came when He did historically, among the Pharisees and the Sadducees. The times change, but the pride (and especially the most wounding kind) remains. May we “know”, through God’s grace, the difference between His wisdom and man’s “intellectual” or “religious” pride.

When the “intellectuals” of his day gang up on him, one of them, “an expert in the law” (go figure) tested him with this question: ‘Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?’” To which Jesus replied “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments’” (NIV, Matt 22:34-40).

No where in the Bible have I found Jesus praise intellect. When He is impressed, it is by someone’s great faith. That is not to say that intelligence is not important, or that faith is not intelligent, but rather, I believe, it provides yet another example of how we cannot gain grace by our own means, including the acquirement of intellectual acumen. Faith, thank God, is not required to pass a test or hold a minimum IQ score. God protects grace, even from our own thoughts. We must think with the heart in the mind. And we must weigh ourselves before we judge others. Thus, the cultivation of our inner life directly affects our interaction with the outer.  To return to Yeats’ poem, I agree we do not do well as representatives of Christ to rant, cast judgment, or pass caustic opinions, cruel in word or deed. Our words, tone and actions should reflect the mystery of Christ and His love for us.

So, I pray that while my daughter cultivates her mind and develops a lively interest in the amazing things around her, she refrains from using such knowledge out of cruelty or arrogance, as Yeats warns. The slope is slippery. I pray that while she grows a deep inner life, she also nurtures kindness towards others. I pray that her love for her God and for herself is extended to others, according to the two great commandments Jesus teaches us. For all else does, indeed, hang on these.

4. Guard your spirit:

Of course, the spirit encapsulates all of the above. When our minds, hearts and bodies glorify God, our spirit follows suit and we most reflect the image of Him in whom we were originally made.

When Jesus sends out his disciples into the world to share the good news, he warns them: “Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves” (ESV, Matt 10:16).

We need to learn how to navigate the world, and be savvy in our interactions, and yet not become like the world.

We need to protect the precious.

In asking God to protect my precious child, I am also asking Him to protect all that is precious, among all of us.

The apostle Paul teaches us, “Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.” (Rom 12:2)

Transform.

With our model being the ever-living, evergreen tree of Christ.

It doesn’t get much better than that. This is the basic premise of Yeats’ prayer, and of mine. This is the ideal re-birth prayer for every day.

Here is Yeats’ final stanza again – it bears repeating:

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.

If we read the final stanza with the Biblical meaning behind “bridegroom”, suddenly the poem moves beyond the simplistic assumptions and even lies of the world (for instance, “you must be married to be fulfilled as a woman”) into the transcendent, and far more meaningful final truth: relationship in Christ.

For as Christians, regardless of our worldly relationship status, we are all married, first and foremost, to Christ.

Etymologically, “custom” comes from the Latin “consuetudo” meaning “habit,” or “tradition.” It can imply a habitual practice so long established that it has the force of law. We only have to think of the Bible’s unfurling, like a great golden ribbon, from Genesis through Revelation, to think of God’s plan for our restored relationship with Him, epitomized in the symbol of the wedding celebration.

And so “ceremony” has its place, too, then. A “ceremony of innocence” marks an entry into the world of hope, such as a baptism or a wedding. The word derives from the Latin “caerimonia” meaning a “sacred rite.” It is a ritual that is formal and momentous – it bears great meaning and weight.

Again, Revelation reminds us of this. So do my daughter’s eyes, bright with joy, when I set her birthday cake in front of her, and we all sing in celebration of her having been born.

God cares enough for each of us to put on a big show, to invite us to the greatest banquet ever!

T. S. Eliot, another modernist poet, famously wrote, “This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper.” But the devoutly Catholic Eliot surely used the “world” with care. This may be the way the world Jesus warns us against ends, but it is not the way in which the Kingdom of God will endure. In Christ, we are promised the celebration of all celebrations, in the fulfillment of custom and the ceremonious reunion of the Bride with her Bridegroom.

If my child has a life rooted in Christ, she will have a resurrection in full bloom in Him also.

I pray for all our re-birthdays such.