Yeats’ “A Prayer for my Daughter” was written in 1919, and published in the collection Michael Robartes and the Dancer. The poet juxtaposes ideas of domesticity and political import, innocence and murderousness, and rationale and sentiment.

Yeats’s “A Prayer for my Daughter” presents the image of a child who sleeps soundly through a thunderous storm. The child referred to here is Anne Butler Yeats, who was born a month after Yeats penned “The Second Coming”. The prescribed poem is placed after “The Second Coming” in the collection. The storm born on the Atlantic Ocean is emblematic of the larger violence of the Irish War of Independence.The external unrest is a concretization of the poet’s internal trauma. The image of the child sleeping innocently by the haystack evocatively signifies the image of Christ. In Yeats‘s “The Second Coming”, the coarse fiend replaces the divine image of Christ. Apart from the wood around Lady Gregory’s estate, nothing seems to bar the intensity of the storm.

The poet is in a state of trance owing to contemplation. He senses the rising sea-wind scream:

“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;”

The sea-wind traverses all the realms and makes its presence felt.…