A Prayer for My Daughter

Once more the storm is howling and half hidUnder this cradle-hood and coverlidMy child sleeps on. There is no obstacleBut Gregory’s Wood and one bare hillWhereby the haystack and roof-levelling wind,Bred on the Atlantic, can be stayed;And for an hour I have walked and prayedBecause of the great gloom that is in my mind.

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

May she be granted beauty and yet notBeauty to make a stranger’s eye distraught,Or hers before a looking-glass, for such,Being made beautiful overmuch,Consider beauty a sufficient end,Lose natural kindness and maybeThe heart-revealing intimacyThat chooses right and never find a friend.

Helen being chosen found life flat and dullAnd later had much trouble from a fool,While that great Queen, that rose out of the spray,Being fatherless could have her wayYet chose a bandy-legged smith for man.It’s certain that fine women eatA crazy salad with their meatWhereby the Horn of Plenty is undone.

In courtesy I’d have her chiefly learned;Hearts are not had as a gift but hearts are earnedBy those that are not entirely beautiful;Yet many, that have played the foolFor beauty’s very self, has charm made wise,And many a poor man that has roved,Loved and thought himself beloved,From a glad kindness cannot take his eyes.

May she become a flourishing hidden treeThat all her thoughts may like the linnet be,And have no business but dispensing roundTheir magnanimities of sound,Nor but in merriment begin a chase,Nor but in merriment a quarrel.Oh, may she live like some green laurelRooted in one dear perpetual place.

My mind, because the minds that I have loved,The sort of beauty that I have approved,Prosper but little, has dried up of late,Yet knows that to be choked with hateMay well be of all evil chances chief.If there’s no hatred in a mindAssault and battery of the windCan never tear the linnet from the leaf.

An intellectual hatred is the worst,So let her think opinions are accursed.Have I not seen the loveliest woman bornOut of the mouth of Plenty’s horn,Because of her opinionated mindBarter that horn and every goodBy quiet natures understoodFor an old bellows full of angry wind?

Considering that, all hatred driven hence,The soul recovers radical innocenceAnd learns at last that it is self-delighting,Self-appeasing, self-affrighting.And that its own sweet will is heaven’s will;She can, though every face should scowlAnd every windy quarter howlOr every bellows burst, be happy still.

And may her bride-groom bring her to a houseWhere all’s accustomed, ceremonious;For arrogance and hatred are the waresPeddled in the thoroughfares.How but in custom and in ceremonyAre innocence and beauty born?Ceremony’s a name for the rich horn.And custom for the spreading laurel tree.