A Prayer for My Daughter

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1919

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Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

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Further Reading & Resources

Related Poems

"Easter 1916" by W.B. Yeats (1921)

This poem was published in the same collection as “A Prayer for my Daughter”: 1921’s Michael Robartes and the Dancer. It illustrates Yeats’s mixed feelings toward the violent methods used by the Irish Nationalists directly involved with their bid for freedom in1916. This poem informs the political reading of “A Prayer for my Daughter,” as well as offers some insight into the relationship between Yeats and Maud Gonne (who married John MacBride, a leader of the Easter 1916 revolt). Yeats waited until the end of the Irish War of Independence to publish his political poems on this topic, then became a senator of the Free Irish State.

"No Second Troy" by W.B. Yeats (1910)

This poem was part of Yeats’s collection The Green Helmet and Other Poems, Yeats’ fifth book of lyrical poetry. Like“A Prayer for my Daughter,” "No Second Troy” compares Maud Gonne to Helen of Troy. Gonne was Yeats’s muse, but consistently rejected his marriage proposals. In Jeffares’s 1988 biography of Yeats, Gonne is quoted as saying, “You make beautiful poetry out of what you call your unhappiness and are happy in that. Marriage would be such a dull affair. Poets should never marry. The world should thank me for not marrying you,” in her rejection of Yeats.

"I am Ireland / Mise Éire" by Pádraic H. Pearse (1912)

Pearse, an Irish revolutionary leader who was executed for his role in the Easter uprising, originally wrote this poem in Gaelic. It has been not only translated into English, but also produced as a song by Patrick Cassidy and performed by the RTE Concert Orchestra in 2016. A poem about Irish sovereignty, it speaks to the reading of Irish Nationalism in Yeats’s “A Prayer for my Daughter.”

Further Literary Resources

"Symbolism of Poetry" by W.B. Yeats (1900)

This essay by Yeats goes into how and why he uses symbols in his writing. It gives context for the style of “A Prayer for my Daughter” (and his other poems) as a part of the larger symbolist artistic movement.

"The Father’s Prayers: W.B. Yeats in 1919, Century Ireland" by Ed Mulhall

This article is part of an ongoing journalistic collaboration between RTE and Boston College, Dublin to revisit and explain the news in Ireland 100 years earlier to the day. The linked page provides extensive background on the political and cultural events that influenced Yeats while he was composing “A Prayer for my Daughter” in 1919. The website can be further explored for detailed information about the events leading up to the Irish War of Independence, such as the Easter 1916 Uprising.

Irish Literature Collection by the Archives and Rare Books Library of the University of Cincinnati

This digital collection, curated by Melissa Schirmer, provides information about the Irish Literary Revival. Yeats played an integral part in the formation of an Irish national identity through literature (as well as politics). His role in the Irish Literary Revival gives context for the reading of his feelings of fatherhood toward Ireland in “A Prayer for my Daughter.”