April 6, 2007

A Prayer for My Daughter


I have walked and prayed for this young child an hour
And heard the sea-wind scream upon the tower,
And under the arches of the bridge, and scream
In the elms above the flooded stream;
Imagining in excited reverie
That the future years had come,
Dancing to a frenzied drum,
Out of the murderous innocence of the sea.


From "A Prayer for My Daughter"
by William Butler Yeats

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

What a pretty picture of her.

Anonymous said...

Coming out of lurking to say - that is such a beautiful picture of her....and the poem is a lovely sentiment as well.

Dawn said...

Yeats :)

Bev Sykes said...

What an absolutely gorgeous photo. She is growing into a beautiful girl (but then she always was)

Iselyahna said...

I read the title, and the first thought in my mind was "Oh dear God, please don't let her have had a seizure."

Beautiful picture; wonderful poem.

Anonymous said...

And...

"She can, though every face should scowl
And every windy quarter howl
Or every bellows burst,
Be happy still."

BC said...

Well, you quoted the nice part of the poem, not the part where he prays that she won't have any opinions because that just leads to unhappiness.

But I kind of suspect that that won't be a problem for Schuyler.

Mrs. Mancuso said...

My gods, the girl just gets more & more beautiful every day.

Anonymous said...

This is why I love Yeats -- you can find an appropriate quote from him about ANYTHING. (Seriously -- I'm a theatrical stage manager, and I've even found an entire poem he wrote about those evil rehearsals when everyone needs something of you and everyone is being a diva, and you come home wanting to kill everyone, change your name and go into banking instead.)

Anonymous said...

Beauty that made me cry. Both the photo and the poem :)