A Prayer for My Daughter Bangla Summary (বাংলায়)

Key Facts

• Writer: William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
• About the Author: An Irish poet, dramatist, writer, and politician. Helped to found the Abbey Theatre. Served two terms as a Senator of the Irish Free State.
• Full Title: Sonnet 43, ‘How do I love thee?, from Sonnets from the Portuguese.
• Written Date: 1919
• Publication Date: 1921
• Tone: Gloomy, precarious, and frightening, and didactic. 
• Genre: A modernist contemplative poem.
• Total Words/ Lines: The poem has been composed in ten stanzas of eight lines each: two rhymed couplets followed by a quatrain of enclosed rhyme.
• Setting: “The Tower”

Literary Devices

• Paradox– “murderous innocence of the sea”
• Personification– “future years…..dancing”, which implies
• the transience of life.
• Symbols “sea wind” and “flooded stream” denote turbulent workforces.
• Alliteration– “be granted beauty.”
• Imagery: “the storm-driven bird” and “the dancing bough” convey the poet’s concerns about the world’s tumultuous nature.
• Metaphor: The “dancing bough” and “storm-driven bird” mentioned above can also be interpreted as metaphors for life’s unpredictable and challenging experiences.

Themes

• Innocence and Experience: The poem contrasts childhood innocence and adulthood’s challenges.
• The Passing of Time: Yeats reflects on the passage of time and how it brings change. 
• Beauty and Fragility: Yeats talks about his daughter’s physical beauty and the problems that come with it. 
• The Role of Women: The poet discusses how women shape the situation. 
• Spiritual and Moral Guidance: The poem is a prayer in the true sense. Yeats prays for his daughter’s spiritual and moral development. 
• Love and Fatherhood: The poem ultimately expresses Yeats’ deep love and concern for his daughter’s well-being. 

Selected Quotations

“Once more the storm is howling, and half hid

Under this cradle-hood and coverlid

My child sleeps on.”

This is the opening scene of the poem. Here, the poet describes a storm blowing outside and his daughter sleeping in his cradle. The ongoing storm reminds him of the challenges in his daughter’s life.

“Helen being chosen found life flat and dull

And later had much trouble from a fool,

While that great Queen, that rose out of the spray,

Being fatherless could have her way”

Yeats says that women with excess beauty suffer from romantic allusion. For example, Helen of Troy and Venus, the goddess of love and beauty, do unwise acts. While the first caused a war due to her folly, the latter married Vulcan, a lame-footed ironsmith. 

“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,”

Explanation: Here, the poet finds a similarity between himself and his daughter. He himself possesses a great passion for romance and beauty that causes him harm.

আরো পড়ুনঃ Piano Bangla Summary (বাংলায়)

“How but in custom and its ceremony

Are innocence and beauty born.”

Explanation: The poet mentions innocence as his daughter’s primary laurel here.

“May she be granted beauty and yet not

Beauty to make a stranger’s eye distraught”

The poet desires no extra beauty for her daughter. He prays for a beauty that will not disturb others.

Point to Note: This poem is addressed to Anne, Yeats’s daughter with Georgie Hyde Lees, whom he married after his first marriage proposal to Maud Gonne was turned down in 1916. After the First World War, the entire world underwent severe turmoil in every sphere of life, agitating Yeats about his daughter’s future. The poem portrays the love and anxiety of a father who has been blessed with a daughter. It was written in 1919 and published in 1921 as part of Yeats’ collection, ‘Robartes and the Dancer’. This poem contains 10 stanzas: each has eight lines (written in iambic pentameter or iambic tetrameter) and follows a loose rhyme scheme of AABBCDDC.

A Prayer for My Daughter Bangla Summary (বাংলায়)

বাইরে যখন ভয়ানক ঝড় বয়ে যাচ্ছে, তখন ইয়েটস তার সদ্য-সুন্দরী কন্যার দোলনায় শান্ত ও সুখে বিশ্রাম নেওয়ার একটি চিত্র দিয়ে কবিতাটি শুরু করেছেন। ঝড়ের তীব্রতা এই ধারণা তৈরি করে যে পৃথিবী শেষ হতে চলেছে। এরপর কবি তার মেয়ের যে বৈশিষ্ট্যগুলো কামনা করেন তা নিয়ে আলোচনা করেন। তিনি চান তার মেয়ে আকর্ষণীয় হোক। কিন্তু তিনি দ্রুত যোগ করেন যে তিনি চান না যে তার মেয়ে  এত সুন্দর হোক যাতে সে অন্যদের বিরক্ত করে। তারপর তিনি তার মেয়ের জন্য সৌজন্য শেখা প্রার্থনা করেন।

আরো পড়ুনঃ I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud Bangla Summary (বাংলায়)

এরপর কবি বিশ্বজুড়ে সুন্দরী নারীদের উদাহরণ তুলে ধরেন যারা তাদের অস্বাভাবিক ও ঐশ্বরিক সৌন্দর্যের ফলে ধ্বংস হয়ে গেছে। তিনি ট্রয়ের হেলেন এবং প্রেম ও সৌন্দর্যের দেবী ভেনাসকে উদাহরণ হিসেবে ব্যবহার করেন। প্রথমজন তার মূর্খতার কারণে যুদ্ধ বাধিয়ে দেয় এবং পরেরটি Vulcan নামে এক খোঁড়া ironsmith বিয়ে করেছিল। কবি তখন তার মেয়ের হৃদয় থেকে ঘৃণা মুছে ফেলার কামনা করেন। সবশেষে কবি তার মেয়ের জন্য এমন নিষ্পাপ অবস্থা কামনা করেন, নিষিদ্ধ ফল খাওয়ার আগে যেমন নিষ্পাপ ছিলেন Eve।