Once more the storm is howling, and half hid
Under this cradle-hood and coverlid
My child sleeps on.
The poem opens by placing the reader in the midst of what feels like an ongoing scene, and indeed an ongoing life, shared between the speaker and his daughter. The phrase "once more" suggests metaphorically that the unpredictability and storminess of life is inevitable—but also, more literally, it efficiently and concisely grounds the reader in the speaker's day-to-day life, down to details like the weather. Similarly, the word "this" pulls the reader into the specificity of the poem's setting, suggesting a shared reference point, and assuming the reader's familiarity with the quotidian objects of the speaker's family life.
Helen being chosen found life flat and dull
And later had much trouble from a fool,
While that great Queen, that rose out of the spray,
Being fatherless could have her way
In some ways, this passage features the speaker straightforwardly supporting his assertion that the most beautiful women suffer from unpleasant romances and a general dissatisfaction. Interestingly, though, the speaker selects as negative examples two women pulled from the myth and literature of antiquity. Yeats often grappled in his work with the relationship and estrangement between modernity and antiquity. Here he seems to make the argument that, in terms of sheer happiness and usefulness, it is unhelpful to be similar to the larger-than-life characters of antiquity, and better to pursue an unremarkable, mundane modern existence.
My mind, because the minds that I have loved,
The sort of beauty that I have approved,
Prosper but little, has dried up of late,
Generally, in this poem the speaker's experiences and feelings are glimpsed only through the lens of his wishes and warnings for his daughter. Only here does he briefly indulge in some personal history, explaining that his own negative relationship experiences (most likely romantic ones, the phrasing suggests) have at least temporarily degraded his own mind. In this moment the speaker identifies himself as similar to his daughter, pinpointing his own vulnerability alongside hers. At the same time, gender differences disrupt this identification: the speaker primarily positions his daughter as a person potentially possessing beauty, while he positions himself primarily as a person at risk in the face of other people's (presumably women's) beauty.
