"A Prayer for My Daughter" is a poem written by William Butler Yeats in 1919. This poem is a prayer-like poem. And it generally tells about the poet's ideas about his daughter who is sleeping at the same time while the poem is being told. Throughout the poem Yeats reflects how he wants his daughter's future to be. This essay will analyze the poem in three sections: 1- What does this poem mean?, 2- The poetic devices, imagery, rhyming, figures of speech, used in the poem and mood, diction, language, and the structure of the poem, 3- An essay in a feminist point of view titled "What does the poet want his daughter to become?" . 1-WHAT DOES THIS POEM MEAN? The poet is watching his infant daughter sleep. In the first stanza he starts with describing the setting of the poem. It is stormy outside, there is a kind of dark and gloomy weather and he prays for her. And he says that he has gloom in his mind and we will understand that what gloom is that in his mind. In the second stanza the poet describes the things while he was praying for his daughter. He walks for an hour and notices the "sea-wind scream upon the tower", "under the arches of the bridge", "in the elms above the flooded stream." They probably represent the dreaming of the human beings and they are decisive. They are all about the present things and they block people from thinking about the future events. The last four lines of the second stanza clearly explain this idea: "Imagining in excited reverie That the future years had come, Dancing to a frenzied drum, Out of the murderous innocence of the sea." In the third stanza he prays for her beauty, but not too much. He considers the beauty as a decisive element for choosing the right person to ma... ... middle of paper ... ... parts of the ideal woman he has in his mind or its opposites. He supports that a woman should be "a flourishing hidden tree", who is not well-known but beautiful. She shouldn't be anything but "merry." " Innocence" is beautiful in women, that's why if his daughter keeps her innocence inside and do not abuse it, she will not be affected by the "wind." He thinks that too much beauty distorts women, and causes them to destroy the gifts that are given by "Horn of Plenty" thus he wants his daughter to use the gifts wisely and properly. And he wants his daughter to learn the fact that "hearts are earned", and the men, who are deceived by just beauty, will notice their mistake later. He wants her daughter not to have strong opinions like hatred, because he thinks that hatred is the worst thing in the world. He hopes she will marry, and her house will be full of customs.
When You are Old, by William Butler Yeats, represents and elderly woman reminiscing of her younger days. A past lover whispers to her as she looks through a photo album. Basically, Yeats is showing that as the woman gets older, she is alone, but she does not have to be lonely. She will always have her memories for companionship.
ideal in respect to her purity and her lack of vanity. He comments on her “open, ardent, and non
Through her autonomy, being unlike others and destined to live an ethereal and divine life, she demonstrates yet another goddess archetype: the virgin. She feels it is her sole destiny to go to the divine and does not fear sacrifice, but exults in her role as both conduit to the gods and a goddess herself. She has a longing to be with the gods and knows she is singular and special among the mortals of Glome. “The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing — to reach the Mountain, to the find the place where all the beauty came from —”
The poem starts with the line, “This girlchild was born as usual,” which suggests that as soon as a girl is born, society already expects her to learn the role she will soon play in when she hits puberty (1). Thus, showing why we are given dolls as little girls to illustrate how we should act and appear according to society. After we learn all the roles we will soon take part in, “the magic of puberty,” hits and girls immediately begin applying the ideals to their own lives (5). As if this attempt to conform is not enough we have other people telling us we are not to perfect. “You have a great big nose and fat legs,” says a classmate to the girl (6). This type of pressure can slowly but surely destroy even the little confidence women do have in themselves.
The poem starts out with the daughter 's visit to her father and demand for money; an old memory is haunting the daughter. feeding off her anger. The daughter calls the father "a ghost [who] stood in [her] dreams," indicating that he is dead and she is now reliving an unpleasant childhood memory as she stands in front of his
This poem opens up the eyes of the reader and teaches us a lesson about life. It is essentially an example of the saying “Don’t judge a book by its cover”. The woman seems so perfect on the outside and for that reason the man wants to be with her, but when he knows that the cover of her book is different from that of most, then he instantly makes up his mind that he won’t even open
“I’m glad it’s a girl. And I hope she’ll be a fool – that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.” (page 17)
“There are various orders of beauty, causing men to make fools of themselves in various styles,” George Eliot. Beauty has caused men to move mountain, and jump through countless hoops. It is a quality that is subjective and affects the beholder differently. In Poe’s Ligea and Hawthorne’s The Birthmark, Ligea, Rowena, and Georgina all had different orders of beauty that similarly affects how their husbands saw them. In these two pieces of literature there was an exaltation of beauty as an abstraction that hid the depth of the women and led to deceit and the sense of superiority in their husbands.
She tells the girl to “walk like a lady” (320), “hem a dress when you see the hem coming down”, and “behave in front of boys you don’t know very well” (321), so as not to “become the slut you are so bent on becoming” (320). The repetition of the word “slut” and the multitude of rules that must be obeyed so as not to be perceived as such, indicates that the suppression of sexual desire is a particularly important aspect of being a proper woman in a patriarchal society. The young girl in this poem must deny her sexual desires, a quality intrinsic to human nature, or she will be reprimanded for being a loose woman. These restrictions do not allow her to experience the freedom that her male counterparts
... all equal forms, and from equal forms to equal practices, from equal practices to equal notions, until from equal notions he realizes the notion of absolute beauty, and finally knows what the essence of beauty is. Diotima explains that this is the life for which a man should live in the view of absolute beauty; a beauty that if you once touched you would not care of gold, clothing, and attractive boys, who’s presence entrances you; and you many a one would be satisfied to live seeing them and talking about them with out food or water, if that were possible, you only want to look to be closer to them and to stare at them. But what if man had eyes to see the true divine beauty, pure and undisrupted, not clogged with the pollutions of human life. To that place looking, and having ability to communicate with true beauty divine and simple? Remember how in that communion only, beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be able to bring forward, not images of beauty, but realities for he has hold not of an image but of a reality, and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue to become the friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may. Would that be a non-honorable life?"
I am going to analyze this text using the intrinsic and feminist literary theory analysis. With the intrinsic analysis, I will brood mostly on the style and characterization of the text. According to Eaglestone, 2009, intrinsic analysis is a look into the text for meaning and understanding, assuming it has no connection, whatsoever, to the outside world. “Style is said to be the way one writes as opposed to what one writes about and is that voice that your readers hear when they read your work” (Wiehardt, n.d). The text uses mostly colors, poems and songs to deliver its messages. The main characters in the...
The poem “For My Daughter” was written by the apprehensive author Weldon Kees. During the time Kees wrote this poem there were many sicknesses that had many people dying, along with the denouement of World War II. Kees captures all the horrific types of events in that era, with the poem about his daughter. Kees initiates the hurt that someone will experience if they have a daughter,by expressing the way he feels about his own daughter's life.
He describes beauty as delicate and rare, unable to be established. He focuses on the lightheartedness of young girls, how they are caught up in beauty, and he warns them to be conscientious of the fact that their beauty will fade and that they cannot put all their hope on their beauty. At the same time, he encourages them to "practice" their beauty until it is gone, and he promises to celebrate that beauty as best he can, with all its value and frailty.
The admiration of beauty by Hedda is not just that but also the admiration of freedom. Her concept of beauty is one that is not tied to monetary things; instead, Hedda longs for the better things in life. For example, in the text, she tells Judge Brack that she did not care about the house that her husband worked so hard for, often worryi...
Analysis of William Butler Yeats' Poems; When You Are Old, The Lake Isle of Innisfree, The Wild Swans at Coole, The Second Coming and Sailing to Byzantium