A Prayer For My Daughter, continuedPoem lyrics of A Prayer For My Daughter by William Butler Yeats ...continued May she become a flourishing hidden tree
That all her thoughts may like the linnet be,
And have no business but dispensing round
Their magnanimities of sound,
Nor but in merriment begin a chase,
Nor but in merriment a quarrel.
O may she live like some green laurel
Rooted in one dear perpetual place.
My mind, because the minds that I have loved,
The sort of beauty that I have approved,
Prosper but little, has dried up of late,
Yet knows that to be choked with hate
May well be of all evil chances chief.
If there's no hatred in a mind
Assault and battery of the wind
Can never tear the linnet from the leaf.
An intellectual hatred is the worst,
So let her think opinions are accursed.
Have I not seen the loveliest woman born
Out of the mouth of plenty's horn,
Because of her opinionated mind
Barter that horn and every good
By quiet natures understood
For an old bellows full of angry wind?
Considering that, all hatred driven hence,
The soul recovers radical innocence
And learns at last that it is self-delighting,
Self-appeasing, self-affrighting,
And that its own sweet will is Heaven's will;
She can, though every face should scowl
And every windy quarter howl
Or every bellows burst, be happy Still.
And may her bridegroom bring her to a house
Where all's accustomed, ceremonious;
For arrogance and hatred are the wares
Peddled in the thoroughfares.
How but in custom and in ceremony
Are innocence and beauty born?
Ceremony's a name for the rich horn,
And custom for the spreading laurel tree.
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A Poet To His Beloved • A Prayer For My Daughter • A Prayer For My Son • A Prayer On Going Into My House • Adam's Curse • Aedh Wishes For The Clothes Of Heaven • Among School Children • An Irish Airman Forsees His Death • Are You Content? • Before The World Was Made • Beggar To Beggar Cried • Byzantium • Crazy Jane On God • Death • Demon And Beast • Easter, 1916 • Ephemera • Fallen Majesty • He Bids His Beloved Be At Peace • He Rembers Forgotten Beauty • He Thinks Of Those Who Have Spoken Evil Of His Beloved • Imitated From The Japanese • Lapis Lazuli • Leda And The Swan • Long-Legged Fly • Mohini Chatterjee • Never Give All The Heart • No Second Troy • Responsibilities • Sailing To Byzantium • Solomon And The Witch • Solomon To Sheba • Spilt Milk • The Fascination Of What's Difficult • The Folly Of Being Comforted • The Gyres • The Heart Of The Woman • The Indian To His Love • The Indian Upon God • The Lake Isle Of Innisfree • The Lover Asks Forgiveness Because Of His Many Moods • The Second Coming • The Stolen Child • The Two Trees • The Wild Swans At Coole • To A Poet, Who Would Have Me Praise Certain Bad Poets, Imitators Of His And Mine • When You Are Old Also read poems by
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