A Prayer for My Daughter

The title, “A Prayer for my Daughter,” immediately signals the poem is about parenthood. Yeats’s work as a symbolist poet invites reading fatherhood not simply on the level of parenting another physical human, but also about fatherhood as a universal concept that can be applied to politics. Yeats was integral in the formation of an Irish National identity, both in literature and in politics. His opinions about Ireland’s struggle for independence began to change when he became a father.

Yeats’s specific concerns about his daughter’s safety and security are described as to be applicable to more general conceptions of fatherhood. The speaker wants to protect his daughter from “assault and battery of the wind”(Line 55), so she remains like a bird living in a tree: a stable home. He also prays she will “be happy” (Line 72) even when “every windy quarter howl[s]” (Line71). The “wind” (Lines 5, 10, 55, 64, 71) is both a frightening natural phenomenon and a symbol for populist violence. In either the collective unconscious or archetypal sense, fathers take on the role of protector from a variety of threats and facilitate daughters finding a home when they become adults. Also, the act of prayer—the speaker has been "pray[ing] for this young child” (Line9)—is one that many fathers, religious or otherwise, participate in due to the fragility of newborns and infants.