A Prayer for My Daughter

"A Prayer for My Daughter" is a poem by William Butler Yeats written in 1919 shortly after the birth of his daughter, Anne Yeats. The poem was first published in the November 1919 issue of Poetry magazine (volume XV), edited by Harriet Monroe, and later included in Yeats' 1921 poetry collection Michael Robartes and the Dancer. It is written to Anne, his daughter with Georgie Hyde-Lees, whom Yeats married after his last marriage proposal to Maud Gonne was rejected in 1916. Yeats composed the poem while staying in a tower at Thoor Ballylee during the Anglo-Irish War, two days after Anne's birth on 26 February 1919. The poem reflects Yeats's complicated views on Irish Nationalism, sexuality, and is considered an important work of Modernist poetry.