I pray—for fashion’s word is out
And prayer comes round again—
That I may seem, though I die old,
A foolish, passionate man.

These lines are from W. B. Yeats’s poem “A Prayer for My Daughter,” written in 1919 in the aftermath of World War I and during the Irish revolutionary period, shortly after the birth of his daughter Anne (born 1919). The poem is framed as a father’s meditation while a storm rages outside, prompting reflections on violence, history, and what inner qualities might best protect a child growing up in a turbulent world. Near the close, Yeats turns from social anxieties to a personal, almost self-mocking petition: that even in old age he might retain the appearance of ardor and intensity rather than settling into sterile respectability.

Yeats plays on the idea that even “prayer” can be subject to fashion—periods of skepticism give way to renewed spiritual language. His request is not for wealth or safety but for a lasting aura of vitality: to “seem” (publicly and perhaps inwardly) “a foolish, passionate man” even when age and disillusionment might be expected to harden him. The line values emotional risk and imaginative fervor over prudence, suggesting that a life worth living retains intensity and vulnerability. It also carries Yeats’s characteristic self-awareness: the speaker knows passion can look foolish, yet prefers that folly to the deadening alternative of cynicism or mere propriety.