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W. B. Yeats
A Prayer for my Daughter
(01) 01 : Once more the storm is howling, and half hid
02 : Under this cradle-hood and coverlid
03 : My child sleeps on. There is no obstacle
04 : But Gregory's wood and one bare hill
05 : Whereby the haystack- and roof-levelling wind,
06 : Bred on the Atlantic, can be stayed;
07 : And for an hour I have walked and prayed
08 : Because of the great gloom that is in my mind.
(02) 09 : I have walked and prayed for this young child an hour
10 : And heard the sea-wind scream upon the tower,
11 : And under the arches of the bridge, and scream
12 : In the elms above the flooded stream;
13 : Imagining in excited reverie
14 : That the future years had come,
15 : Dancing to a frenzied drum,
16 : Out of the murderous innocence of the sea.
(03) 17 : May she be granted beauty and yet not
18 : Beauty to make a stranger's eye distraught,
19 : Or hers before a looking-glass, for such,
20 : Being made beautiful overmuch,
21 : Consider beauty a sufficient end,
22 : Lose natural kindness and maybe
23 : The heart-revealing intimacy
24 : That chooses right, and never find a friend.
(04) 25 : Helen being chosen found life flat and dull
26 : And later had much trouble from a fool,
27 : While that great Queen, that rose out of the spray,
28 : Being fatherless could have her way
29 : Yet chose a bandy-leggèd smith for man.
30 : It's certain that fine women eat
31 : A crazy salad with their meat
32 : Whereby the Horn of Plenty is undone.
(05) 33 : In courtesy I'd have her chiefly learned;
34 : Hearts are not had as a gift but hearts are earned
35 : By those that are not entirely beautiful;
36 : Yet many, that have played the fool
37 : For beauty's very self, has charm made wise,
38 : And many a poor man that has roved,
39 : Loved and thought himself beloved,
40 : From a glad kindness cannot take his eyes.
(06) 41 : May she become a flourishing hidden tree
42 : That all her thoughts may like the linnet be,
43 : And have no business but dispensing round
44 : Their magnanimities of sound,
45 : Nor but in merriment begin a chase,
46 : Nor but in merriment a quarrel.
47 : O may she live like some green laurel
48 : Rooted in one dear perpetual place.
(07) 49 : My mind, because the minds that I have loved,
50 : The sort of beauty that I have approved,
51 : Prosper but little, has dried up of late,
52 : Yet knows that to be choked with hate
53 : May well be of all evil chances chief.
54 : If there's no hatred in a mind
55 : Assault and battery of the wind
56 : Can never tear the linnet from the leaf.
(08) 57 : An intellectual hatred is the worst,
58 : So let her think opinions are accursed.
59 : Have I not seen the loveliest woman born
60 : Out of the mouth of Plenty's horn,
61 : Because of her opinionated mind
62 : Barter that horn and every good
63 : By quiet natures understood
64 : For an old bellows full of angry wind?
(09) 65 : Considering that, all hatred driven hence,
66 : The soul recovers radical innocence
67 : And learns at last that it is self-delighting,
68 : Self-appeasing, self-affrighting,
69 : And that its own sweet will is Heaven's will;
70 : She can, though every face should scowl
71 : And every windy quarter howl
72 : Or every bellows burst, be happy still.
(10) 73 : And may her bridegroom bring her to a house
74 : Where all's accustomed, ceremonious;
75 : For arrogance and hatred are the wares
76 : Peddled in the thoroughfares.
77 : How but in custom and in ceremony
78 : Are innocence and beauty born?
79 : Ceremony's a name for the rich horn,
80 : And custom for the spreading laurel tree.