In Yeat's "A Prayer for My Daughter, what lessons does the poet learn from his own life's experiences and how does that influence the prayer he...

We can assume that W.B. Yeats' experiences have served to
influence the things he wishes for his daughter in the poem, "A Prayer for My
Daughter."

The first thing Yeats wishes is that his
daughter will be given beauty, but not the kind that will distract
others or herself—that others might become "distraught" by her beauty, or that
she might become too preoccupied with her own image in the mirror.
For some people, beauty becomes more important than anything and the pursuit of beauty
leads one to believe that having it means that nothing else is important in life. For
some, having beauty robs them of "natural kindness," as well as honest "intimacy," which
allow one to make the right choices—rather than to idolize beauty to the extent of all
else, and not ever be able to find a true friend.

Yeats
alludes to famous women who were considered beautiful, and that life wasn't actually so
great for them. He speaks of Helen of Troy and Venus, the goddess of love. Yeats knows
that beauty is fleeting: what he wishes for his daughter is to have knowledge or "have
her chiefly learned..." of "courtesy."

Yeats has experience
the pain that accompanies great beauty in a woman, in his love for Maud Gonne (an
"actress and political activist"). While beautiful, this woman (who he met at twenty-two
and wooed for almost thirty years) did not have the special qualities of the woman who
Yeats ultimately married, Georgie Hyde-Lees. Gonne's beauty brought her no satisfaction,
and left Yeats greatly frustrated:

readability="8">

Yeats suggests that kindness and generosity breed
trust and affection between people. Yeats would also wish his daughter a life of
stability and deep-rootedness—that is, a quiet life away from noisy
thoroughfares.

Yeats did not
want his daughter deeply involved with the very things that seemed in his mind to be
distressful:

readability="8">

..."intellectual, political, financial, or
emotional struggle."

He
wanted his daughter to think less about her appearance and "cultivate her own personal
worth...and her soul." Yeats' experiences with Gonne and then his wife showed two very
different women, and based upon his relationships with both women, he seemed to believe
that the characteristics his wife had were the qualities most admirable, and those he
hoped his daughter would also have also.