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<\/a>It\u2019s St. Patrick\u2019s Day, so we\u2019d best pick an Irish poet for this regular feature\u2014or else I\u2019ll be in Dutch with my Irish wife, the erstwhile Katie McNiff. Yeats or Wilde? That was my question. Oscar Wilde, for all his flamboyance, had a deeply spiritual side. (Read his \u201cDe Profundis\u201d some day when you feel that God is far away.) But with one daughter of mine being received into the Catholic Church at Easter and the other embarked on an exciting new career path, I have to go with William Butler Yeats (left) and his beautiful prayer for his own daughter. St. Joseph would have understood:\n<\/a>
\nOnce more the storm is howling, and half hid
\nUnder this cradle-hood and coverlid
\nMy child sleeps on. There is no obstacle
\nBut Gregory\u2019s wood and one bare hill
\nWhereby the haystack- and roof-levelling wind,
\nBred on the Atlantic, can be stayed;
\nAnd for an hour I have walked and prayed
\nBecause of the great gloom that is in my mind.<\/p>\n
I have walked and prayed for this young child an hour
\nAnd heard the sea-wind scream upon the tower,
\nAnd under the arches of the bridge, and scream
\nIn the elms above the flooded stream;
\nImagining in excited reverie
\nThat the future years had come,
\nDancing to a frenzied drum,
\nOut of the murderous innocence of the sea.<\/p>\n
May she be granted beauty and yet not
\nBeauty to make a stranger\u2019s eye distraught,
\nOr hers before a looking-glass, for such,
\nBeing made beautiful overmuch,
\nConsider beauty a sufficient end,
\nLose natural kindness and maybe
\nThe heart-revealing intimacy
\nThat chooses right, and never find a friend.<\/p>\n
Helen being chosen found life flat and dull
\nAnd later had much trouble from a fool,
\nWhile that great Queen, that rose out of the spray,
\nBeing fatherless could have her way
\nYet chose a bandy-leggd smith for man.
\nIt\u2019s certain that fine women eat
\nA crazy salad with their meat
\nWhereby the Horn of Plenty is undone.<\/p>\n
In courtesy I\u2019d have her chiefly learned;
\nHearts are not had as a gift but hearts are earned
\nBy those that are not entirely beautiful;
\nYet many, that have played the fool
\nFor beauty\u2019s very self, has charm made wise,
\nAnd many a poor man that has roved,
\nLoved and thought himself beloved,
\nFrom a glad kindness cannot take his eyes.<\/p>\n
May she become a flourishing hidden tree
\nThat all her thoughts may like the linnet be,
\nAnd have no business but dispensing round
\nTheir magnanimities of sound,
\nNor but in merriment begin a chase,
\nNor but in merriment a quarrel.
\nO may she live like some green laurel
\nRooted in one dear perpetual place.<\/p>\n
My mind, because the minds that I have loved,
\nThe sort of beauty that I have approved,
\nProsper but little, has dried up of late,
\nYet knows that to be choked with hate
\nMay well be of all evil chances chief.
\nIf there\u2019s no hatred in a mind
\nAssault and battery of the wind
\nCan never tear the linnet from the leaf.<\/p>\n
An intellectual hatred is the worst,
\nSo let her think opinions are accursed.
\nHave I not seen the loveliest woman born
\nOut of the mouth of Plenty\u2019s horn,
\nBecause of her opinionated mind
\nBarter that horn and every good
\nBy quiet natures understood
\nFor an old bellows full of angry wind?<\/p>\n
Considering that, all hatred driven hence,
\nThe soul recovers radical innocence
\nAnd learns at last that it is self-delighting,
\nSelf-appeasing, self-affrighting,
\nAnd that its own sweet will is Heaven\u2019s will;
\nShe can, though every face should scowl
\nAnd every windy quarter howl
\nOr every bellows burst, be happy still.<\/p>\n
And may her bridegroom bring her to a house
\nWhere all\u2019s accustomed, ceremonious;
\nFor arrogance and hatred are the wares
\nPeddled in the thoroughfares.
\nHow but in custom and in ceremony
\nAre innocence and beauty born?
\nCeremony\u2019s a name for the rich horn,
\nAnd custom for the spreading laurel tree.<\/p>\n
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