Explore "A Prayer for my Son" by W.B. Yeats on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Bid a strong ghost stand at the head / That my Michael may sleep sound, / Nor cry, nor turn in the bed / Till his morning meal come round; / And may departing twilight keep / All dread afar till morning's back / That his mother may not lack / Her fill of sleep.
Bid the ghost have sword in hand: / There are malicious things, although / Few dream that they exist, / Who have planned his murder, for they know / Of some most haughty deed or thought / That waits upon his future days, / And would through hatred of the bays / Bring that to nought.
Though You can fashion everything / From nothing every day, and teach / The morning stars to sing, / You have lacked articulate speech / To tell Your simplest want, and known, / Wailing upon a woman's knee, / All of that worst ignominy / Of flesh and bone;
And when through all the town there ran / The servants of Your enemy / A woman and a man, / Unless the Holy Writings lie, / Have borne You through the smooth and rough / And through the fertile and waste, / Protecting till the danger past / With human love.