A Prayer for My Daughter

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1919

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Symbols & Motifs

Laurel Tree

Both elm and laurel trees appear in “A Prayer for my Daughter,” but the laurel reappears in several stanzas, emphasizing it over the one description of the elms that decorate Thoor Ballylee, where the poem is set. The laurel tree echoes Greek mythology in other stanzas. In Greek myth, Daphne rejected the advances of Apollo and asked the river god to help her escape; the river god turned her into a laurel tree, thwarting Apollo’s chase. This myth—as well as the laurel crown seen in sporting events (and other competitions)—casts the laurel as a symbol of victory and autonomy.

The laurel first appears in stanza six as a “flourishing hidden tree” (Line41) that the father prays his daughter will become and, at the end of this stanza, he hopes she will “live like some green laurel / Rooted in one dear perpetual place” (Lines47-48). This comparison places Yeats’sdaughter Anne in the role of Daphne: She has security and safety from violence.

In a political reading, the symbol of the laurel informs the outcome for the Irish nationalists: victory in the war for independence. Because he was a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn—whose membership also included the creators of the Rider-Waite Tarot deck—Yeats was involved with popularizing the use of the laurel wreath as a symbol for victory in a system of divination (as in the Six of Wands card). If the daughter of the poem is to be read as the nation of Ireland, birthed in the war started in1919, Yeats uses the laurel to advocate for a long-term, “perpetual” (Line48) freedom for Ireland.

The image of the “spreading laurel tree” (Line 80) closes the poem; the repetition here emphasizes Yeats’s desire for his daughter’s success and the success of the Irish nationalists. The symbol is developed by its connection with custom and innocence. The latter, Yeats argues, is born in the former and custom is simply another “name” (Line 79) for the laurel tree. Daphne avoiding Apollo’s advances by becoming a laurel is one kind of innocence, and “custom” (Line 80) speaks to cultural practices over which the Irish wish to have autonomy without colonial English rule.

Linnet

The linnet, a small species of bird, was a common pet by the time Yeats wrote “A Prayer for my Daughter.”In addition to being symbolically used by a number of poets, including Alfred Tennyson and Robert Burns, it also became a girl’s name. The linnet is used to refer to a beautiful woman, as well as a caged pet. Yeats uses this bird to symbolize innocence and a type of “courtesy” (Line33): a prescribed temperament for housewives. Many “courtesy” (Line33)—or etiquette—books described how women should focus on entertaining; this is reflected in Yeats’ lines: “all her thoughts may like the linnet be, / And have no business but dispensing round / Their magnanimities of sound” (Lines42-44). Rather than be involved in “business” (Line43), women of Yeats’s era and class were trained to sing and play the piano, making music as birds do.

However, Yeats’s linnet is not a caged bird; it lives in a laurel tree. Furthermore, in the absence of hatred, conflict can “never tear the linnet from the leaf” (Line 56). The linnet is secure in her home, her treehouse. To read this through a political lens, Yeats’s daughter is Ireland being born as a free nation; being able to weather the “assault and battery of the wind” (Line 55) and remain in the tree would symbolize the ability to survive colonial attacks and remain independent.

Tarot Symbols: The Tower and Fool

Yeats utilized tarot symbols in many of his poems; he was part of an occult society with the creators of the most famous tarot deck: A.E. Waite and Pamela Coleman Smith. Twotarot symbols recurring in many of Yeats’spoems, including “A Prayer for my Daughter,” are the tower and the fool—the major arcana (trump) cards numbered XVI and 0, respectively.

The Tower in the tarot deck created by Waite and Coleman symbolizes the Tower of Babel; it represents sudden and violent change. Yeats penned an entire poem about this symbol and titled it, as well as the collection in which it was published, “The Tower.” In“A Prayer for my Daughter,” the speaker hears the “sea-wind scream upon the tower” (Line 10), which is in line with the imagery Smith painted for this card: a bolt of lightning hitting a tower. In the physical world, the tower is literally Thoor Ballylee, where Yeats resides, but it holds specific significance being battered by a storm as an omen of catastrophic events. The Babel division of languages can further be applied to the suppression of the Gaelic language by the occupying English.

“A Prayer for my Daughter” also includes the symbol of the fool. This tarot archetype shows up in Yeats’s fiction as well as his poems about Red Hanrahan—a character based on a bard in Irish folklore. The fool often appears in Greek myth; Yeats uses “fool” (Lines26, 36) to allude to Paris in “A Prayer for my Daughter.” Men who succumb to excessively beautiful women are also more generally considered “fool[s]” (Lines 26, 36) in this poem.