W. B. Yeats' "No Second Troy" as a Love Poem

W. B. Yeats

W. B. Yeats is generally regarded as a link between the decadent aestheticism of the nineties and a new realism of the modern age. He is also one of the greatest love poets of the English language and the complexity! The lyric grace and authenticity of feeling of his love poems along with his intensity and his expression of the sense of loss resulting from failure in love all go into ranking him with the other great love poets in the World Literature. Such a typical poem is his No Second Troy. The whole poem is framed out into four rhetorical questions as a means of coming to terms with the reality of his unrequited love relationship with Maud Gonne.

Yeats’s failure in his love for Maud Gonne and the sense of loss which resulted from this kept haunting him throughout his life. He met Maud Gonne when he was twenty-three years old and fell instantly and feverishly in love with her. Yeats has few equals in English poetry in the way he has immortalized the beauty and charm of Maud Gonne –

          “With beauty like a tightned bow, a kind

          That is not natural in an age like this”,

Elsewhere he sees Maud Gonne as – “Tall and noble but with face and bosom

Delicate in colour as apple blossom”. These lines clearly show that he saw Maud Gonne as not only beautiful but very majestic also.

The title ‘No Second Troy’ makes it clear that Yeats equates Maud Gonne with Helen, the destructive Greek beauty. Yeats attempts here to present his relations with persons and events connected with his personal life in poetic terms. Yeats begins the poem very subtly, freeing Maud Gonne from the church of ruining his life and of inciting the Irish impasses to violence. At the sometime, it becomes clear that Yeats constantly remained aware of the emotional harm she had done to his life. Yeats says that Maud Gonne had lately shown that she was capable of making men so violent as to incite the masse against the aristocracy but this he says is not so much her fault. Being what she is seen can not be peaceful because she has a mind full of nobleness and simplicity and her beauty is like a tightened bow-high and solitary and most stern a phenomena which in the present age is hard to find. Yeats concludes the poem by saying that she could not have done otherwise being what she is. Had there been another Troy for her to burn she had it in her to occasion its burning in much the same way as Helen was responsible for the burning of the city of Troy.

Maud Gonne got married to Major Macbride in 1903 and Yeats’s love poetry after that comes to have much more of poignancy. The sense of loss resulting from his failure is well expressed in ‘No Second Troy’. The poet here shows his miserable state for Maud Gonne after praising Maud Gonne for her eternal beauty. The poet concludes that he finds no justification for his blaming her either for the disaster she had caused in his life or for the violence she has incited in other people.

W. B. Yeats’ "No Second Troy" is a deeply personal love poem that explores the complex emotions of admiration, frustration, and acceptance. Through the classical allusion to Helen of Troy, Yeats elevates Maud Gonne to the status of a mythic figure, portraying her as a woman whose beauty and ideals are both awe-inspiring and destructive. His love for her is tinged with sorrow and conflict, but also with a profound understanding of her nature. The poem is not a conventional celebration of love, but rather a reflection on the tragic nature of idealism and passion, making it a powerful and poignant expression of unrequited love. To conclude here is William H. Pritchard – “Undeniably the poem is exploited with great suppleness. Its strength will brooke no opposition, no qualifications. The beauty of this poem and of the best of the middle Yeats is indeed like a tightened bow”.   

Ardhendu De  

               1. Sofield, D., & Tucker, H. F. (1998). Under Criticism: Essays for William H. Pritchard.