A Prayer For My Daughter
Once more the storm is howling, and half hid
Uhis cradle-hood and coverlid
My child sleeps on. There is no obstacle
But Gregorys wood and one bare hill
Whereby the haystack- and roof-levelling wind,
Bred olantic, be stayed;
And for an hour I have walked and prayed
Because of the great gloom that is in my mind.
I have walked and prayed for this young child an hour
And heard the sea-wind scream upoower,
And uhe arches of the bridge, and scream
In the elms above the flooded stream;
Imagining ied reverie
That the future years had e,
Dang to a frenzied drum,
Out of the murderous innoce of the sea.
May she be granted beauty a not
Beauty to make a strangers eye distraught,
Or hers before a looking-glass, for such,
Being made beautiful overmuch,
sider beauty a suffit end,
Lose natural kindness and maybe
The heart-revealing intimacy
That chooses right, and never find a friend.
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
Yet chose a bandy-leggèd smith for man.
Its certain that fine wome
A crazy salad with their meat
Whereby the Horn of Plenty is undone.
In courtesy Id have her chiefly learned;
Hearts are not had as a gift but hearts are earned
By those that are irely beautiful;
Yet many, that have played the fool
For beautys very self, has charm made wise,
And many a poor man that has roved,
Loved and thought himself beloved,
From a glad kindness ot take his eyes.
May she bee a flourishing hidden tree
That all her thoughts may like the li be,
And have no business but dispensing round
Their magnanimities of sound,
Nor but in merriment begin a chase,
Nor but in merriment a quarrel.
O may she live like some green laurel
Rooted 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 hate
May well be of all evil ces chief.
If theres no hatred in a mind
Assault and battery of the wind
ever tear the li from the leaf.
An intellectual hatred is the worst,
So let her think opinions are accursed.
Have I not seen the loveliest woman born
Out of the mouth of Plentys horn,
Because of her opinionated mind
Barter that horn and every good
By quiet natures uood
For an old bellows full of angry wind?
sidering that, all hatred driven hence,
The soul recovers radical innoce
And learns at last that it is self-delighting,
Self-appeasing, self-affrighting,
And that its ow will is Heavens will;
She , though every face should scowl
And every windy quarter howl
Or every bellows burst, be happy still.
And may her bridegro her to a house
Where alls aced, ceremonious;
Fand hatred are the wares
Peddled ihhfares.
How but in and in ceremony
Are innod beauty born?
Ceremonys a name for the rich horn,
And for the spreading laurel tree.