A Prayer for My Daughter — Chapter Summary
ICSE · Class 12 · English- Short Stories : Perspectives and Reflections
Summary of A Prayer for My Daughter for ICSE Class 12 English- Short Stories : Perspectives and Reflections. A Prayer for My Daughter is a reflective poem.
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Overview
A Prayer for My Daughter is a reflective poem by William Butler Yeats in which a father prays for his sleeping child during a storm. The poem connects personal anxiety with larger concerns about beauty, hatred, custom, and stability. The speaker fears a world full of chaos, vanity, and conflict, and
Key Concepts
The poem opens with a violent
The poem opens with a violent storm outside while the child sleeps peacefully inside. The storm reflects the speaker’s disturbed mind and the unstable
The speaker does not reject beauty
The speaker does not reject beauty, but he wants his daughter to have only enough beauty to avoid pride, vanity, and harmful attention.
Helen and the unnamed sea
Helen and the unnamed sea-born queen are mentioned as examples of beautiful women whose lives were shaped by difficult or foolish choices.
The speaker wants his daughter
The speaker wants his daughter to be chiefly learned in courtesy, because affection and trust are earned through character, not given automatically.
The daughter is imagined as
The daughter is imagined as a flourishing hidden tree, while her thoughts are compared to a linnet. These images suggest natural growth, gentleness, a
Learning Objectives
- Understand the central concern of the poem: a father's prayer for his daughter’s future.
- Identify the main values the poet desires for his daughter, such as courtesy, innocence, and inner peace.
- Explain the use of symbols such as the storm, the tree, the linnet, and the laurel.
- Analyse how Yeats uses mythological references to support his ideas about beauty and life.
- Recognise the poet’s warning against vanity, hatred, and intellectual pride.
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Sources & Official References
Content is aligned to the official syllabus. Refer to the board website for the latest curriculum.
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