William Butler Yeats

Yeats wrote a poem about his daughter, Anne Butler Yeats born February 26, 1919. "A Prayer for My Daughter" was my favorite in this section.

"Once more the storm is howling, and half hid
Under this cradle-hood and coverlid
My child sleeps on" (p. 1123).
Looking at these lines from a literal stand point I would say that his daughter is sleeping through a fierce storm occurring outside. Some children can sleep through anything. However, for a figurative point of view, I would say that the storm represents turbulence around him, such as events during the time in which Yeats lived. People want to keep their children safe and he wishes to shield Anne from badness.

"And for an hour I have walked and prayed
Because of the great gloom that is in my mind."....
"Imagining in excited reverie
That the future years had come"
Yeats seems to be an anxious and worried father. He has put much thought into his daughter's future. All parents want their children to have better lives than they did. He wants her to inherit the traits and character necessary to lead a fulfilling life. He wants her to be happy.

"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,"
These lines tell us that Yeats wishes for his daughter to be beautiful, but not strikingly or overly beautiful. My interpretation was that he was saying that having too much beauty can be a detriment. It can be a curse because it can deceive those that observe the beauty as well as the person that possesses it. I can understand where he may derive this opinion because I know some people that are extremely beautiful on the outside and ugly on the inside. We all know if you are ugly on the inside, that beauty on the outside no longer seems so attractive. Its what's on the inside that counts. Later in the poem he mentions Helen of Troy to further get this point across.