-
-
-
- A LETTER TO PAPA
- by J. Porter
-
-
- Prayer for my
Daughter. W.B.Yeats. 1865 - 1939
- Written on the birth of
his daughter, Anne Butler Yeats in 1919
-
- Relevant lines
-
- And may her bridegroom
bring her to a house
- Where all’s
accustomed, ceremonious
- ......
- May she be granted beauty
and yet not
- Beauty to make a
stranger’s eye distraught,
- Or hers before a looking
glass...
- ......
- In courtesy I’d have
her chiefly learned;
- Hearts are not had as a
gift but hearts are earned
- By those that are not
totally beautiful;
- ......
-
- From GEOGE’S GHOSTS
A new life of W.B.Yeats by Brenda Maddox 1999
-
- Page 332. George
(W.B.’s wife) and Yeats wished their daughter were
- more stylish. Yeats
scolded her if she went around with ladders in her
stockings
- and urged her to wear
gold nail varnish and dress more exotically. (Her aunts
in
- Dundrum felt the same.)
Their concerns probably masked anxiety that she may
- not find the well born
husband who would ‘bring her to a house/Where
all’s
- accustomed,
ceremonious.’ (In the event, Anne Yeats never
narried and has said
- she found ‘A Prayer
to my Daughter’ very hard to live up to.)
-
-
-
- My memory of Anne Yeats
on a a one night visit to us while passing
- through Kano, Nigeria,
about thirty years ago, en-route from India to Dublin,
- was of a pallid, greatly
overweight woman with a voracious appetite. She ladled
- three heaped teaspoons of
sugar into her coffee. I’ve often wondered since,
what effect the publicised expectations of her famous
father had on her.
-
-
- A LETTER TO PAPA
- by J. Porter
-
- I thank you not for your
prayer to me
- The burden of your hopes
has hobbled
- My very soul.
- I wear my laddered
stockings
- Defiantly I over sweeten
my coffee
- And grow fat.
- I spurn the artifices of
beauty
- I shun that which was not
given to me
- I am as I am.
- But thankyou for the
American royalties
- Safe from the tax man
I’ve used them well
- Travelling the world.
-
-
-
- W.B.Y. bequeathed the
American royalties to Anne and the
- European royalties to his
son Michael.
-