A Prayer for My Daughter

A Prayer for My Daughter 

by William Butler Yeats
Photograph of William Butler Yeats taken in 1920
Written	1919 (1919)
First published in	1921 (1921)
Country	Ireland
Language	English
Subject(s)	Irish Nationalism, parenthood
Publication date	published in 1921 as part of Yeats' collection "Michael Robartes and the Dancer"

"A Prayer for my Daughter" is a poem by William Butler Yeats written in 1919 and published in 1921 as part of Yeats' collection Michael Robartes and the Dancer. It is written to Anne, his daughter with Georgie Hyde Lees, whom Yeats married after his last marriage proposal to Maud Gonne was rejected in 1916. Yeats wrote the poem while staying in a tower at Thoor Ballylee during the Anglo-Irish War, two days after Anne's birth on February 26, 1919. The poem reflects Yeats's complicated views on Irish Nationalism, sexuality, and is considered an important work of Modernist poetry.

The poem begins by describing "storm" which is a "howling", and his newborn daughter, sleeping "half hid" in her cradle, and protected somewhat from the storm. The storm, which can in part be read as symbolizing the Irish War of Independence, overshadows the birth of Yeats' daughter and creates the political frame that sets the text into historical context. In stanza two, the setting for the poem is revealed as being "the tower", a setting for many of Yeats's poems, including the book of poems entitled The Tower (1928). This is Thoor Ballylee, an ancient Norman tower in Galway, which Yeats had bought in 1917 and where he intended making a home.

Conflicts between Ireland and the United Kingdom were common subjects of Yeats' poetry, including his notable poems about the Dublin Lockout ("September 1913") and the Easter Rising ("Easter 1916"). David Holdeman suggests that this poem "carries over from 'The Second Coming'" in the tone it uses to describe the political situation facing Ireland at the end of World War One and with the formation of the Irish Republican Army.