A Prayer for my Daughter Literary Elements

The unnamed father of an infant girl, and an autobiographical depiction of Yeats himself

Ten octets with an AABBCDDC rhyme scheme written in iambic pentameter, though this meter is not strict or consistent

The speaker uses a metaphor to imagine the coming years with the phrase "the future years had come,/Dancing to a frenzied drum," and uses the metaphor of "crazy salad" to describe irrationality.

Introducing the symbol of the laurel tree, Yeats employs both a metaphor—"May she become a flourishing hidden tree"—and a simile—"O may she live like some green laurel."

The speaker also describes his own mind with metaphor, saying that it has "dried up of late."

Finally, the phrase "arrogance and hatred are the wares/Peddled in the thoroughfares" metaphorically describes emotions as material objects.

The poem opens with both the assonant O sounds of "once more the storm" and the alliterative H sounds of "half hid."
Alliteration also appears in the phrases "great gloom," "find a friend," "linnet from the leaf," and "bellows burst," while both alliterative S sounds and assonant E sounds appear in "sea-wind scream."

The poem describes beauty as a gift, but also, unexpectedly, casts it primarily as a burden. Similarly, while the speaker instructs his daughter to pursue traditional femininity, the work contains an ironic undertone of critique, or acknowledgment of, the burden of gender norms.

Dramatic Monologue

Ballylee Castle, Ireland, in 1919

Urgent, mournful, reflective

The poem's protagonists are the speaker and his daughter, while its antagonists are forces of chaos and unhappiness (embodied by the raging storm)

The work's major conflict is between the speaker, and the future he envisions for his daughter, and the various, unpredictable elements that might disrupt this future (both those rooted in the daughter's own decisions and those with external sources).

The poem's climax is the moment in which the speaker fully envisions his desired future for his daughter, detailing the abundant and secure home to which her future husband will take her.

The poem begins with a threatening storm, which foreshadows the various threats and metaphorical storms that the daughter will one day encounter.

The assertion that Helen of Troy "had much trouble from a fool" describes the legendary Trojan war in comically understated terms.

The speaker alludes to classical myth and legend several times, first referencing the beautiful Helen of Troy, and then the birth of the goddess Aphrodite. He also alludes to Thoor Ballylee, the location in which Yeats composed the poem.

"Stranger's eye" represents an individual as a single body part using synecdoche. Similarly, the heart is frequently used as a representation of an individual throughout the poem, as in "Hearts are not had as a gift but hearts are earned."

The storm is personified in numerous ways, with phrases such as "the storm is howling," "roof-levelling wind,/Bred on the Atlantic," and "heard the sea-wind scream upon the tower."

Describing the way that some beautiful women neglect friendship, the speaker hyperbolically claims that they "never find a friend." In contrast, describing women with internal integrity, he claims in absolute terms that "She can, though every face should scowl/And every windy quarter howl/Or every bellows burst, be happy still."

The words "scream" and "howl" are onomatopoetic.