No Second Troy

“No Second Troy,” by William Butler Yeats, was first published as part of the 1910 collection Green Helmet and Other Poems. Composed after decades of Yeats’s unrequited love for Maud Gonne, “No Second Troy” evokes the mythological Trojan War and the figure of Helen of Troy to depict love as a battlefield. Its form demonstrates the tension between Yeats’s early, traditionally structured poetry and his later, more experimental poetry, which grew freer in style as he aged. This tension between formality and free expression makes the poem a cornerstone of Yeats’s progression as a poet.

William Butler Yeats is a key figure both in Irish culture and literary Modernism. Older than most poets associated with the Modernist movement, Yeats’s constant experiments in style and form allow his poetry to speak across generations. Yeats received the 1923 Nobel prize in literature largely for his poetry and his involvement with the Abbey Theatre. Yeats’s theatrical works are still influential, but he is best remembered for his innovative poetry.

Poet Biography

William Butler Yeats was born in Sandymount, Dublin, Ireland on June 13, 1865. Yeats’s father, John Butler Yeats, was an aspiring lawyer who later pursued art at Heatherley School of Fine Art. Soon after Yeats’s birth, his family moved to Merville, Sligo where his mother, Susan Mary Pollexfen, and her family operated a milling and shipping business.

Despite being a member of the Protestant Ascendancy—the English gentry who ruled over Ireland—Ireland made an early impression on Yeats, and he always identified as Irish. Yeats attended school in both Ireland and England, where the family moved in 1867 so his father could pursue his art career. Yeats attended Godolphin School between 1877 and 1880. School reports describe Yeats as a fair student with poor spelling and interest in biological sciences. The family returned to Dublin in late 1880, where Yeats attended Erasmus Smith High School and in 1884 matriculated to the Metropolitan School of Art.

Yeats’s first works, written between the ages of 17 and 20, were heavily influenced by English Romantic poets like Percy Bysshe Shelley (See: Further Reading & Resources). By the 1890s, Yeats’s attention had turned to Irish mythology, which became a constant theme in his works. Around this time Yeats also became interested in mysticism and collaborated with Edwin Ellis on collecting The Works of William Blake, which they published in 1893. Yeats and Ellis’s work resulted in the discovery of Blake’s manuscript Vala, or the Four Zoas.

Yeats’s family self-published many of Yeats’s first collections, such as 1886’s Mosada: A Dramatic Poem and 1889’s The Wanderings of Oisin. These collections introduced many of Yeats’s perpetual themes, including the struggle between thought and action. These themes also guided Yeats’s infatuation with Maud Gonne, who sought him out in 1889 as an admirer of his poetry. Yeats’s obsession with Gonne led to him proposing marriage to her four times between 1891 and 1903. Gonne’s refusal of Yeats was partly due to his inactivity in nationalist politics. In 1908, the two consummated their relationship one night in Paris. In 1910’s “No Second Troy” and 1928’s “A Man Young and Old,” Yeats uses the Trojan War as a vehicle to explore his relationship with Gonne.

When Gonne refused Yeats’s final proposal in 1916, he married Georgie Hyde-Lees. Together, they had two children. In 1923, Yeats received the Nobel Prize in Literature for his poetry and for establishing the Abbey Theatre to promote Irish plays. Yeats wrote many of his most famous poems between 1923 and his death in 1939. Yeats died in France at age 73. His remains were moved to St. Columba’s Church, County Sligo, in September 1948.

Poem Text

Why should I blame her that she filled my days

With misery, or that she would of late

Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,

Or hurled the little streets upon the great,

Had they but courage equal to desire?

What could have made her peaceful with a mind

That nobleness made simple as a fire,

With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind

That is not natural in an age like this,

Being high and solitary and most stern?

Why, what could she have done, being what she is?

Was there another Troy for her to burn?

Yeats, William Butler. “No Second Troy.” 1910. Poetry Foundation.

Summary

“No Second Troy” consists of four rhetorical questions posed by Yeats’s speaker. The first of these questions—which makes up Lines 1-5 of the poem—shifts focus twice while the speaker attempts to articulate it. The speaker begins by asking why they should “blame her that she filled my days / [w]ith misery” (Lines 1-2). The speaker then sets this question aside to wonder instead whether the aforementioned woman would “[h]ave taught to ignorant men most violent ways” (Line 3). This same query leads the speaker to finally ask whether the woman would have instead “hurled the little streets upon the great” (Line 4).

The speaker asks their second question more directly. The speaker wonders “[w]hat could have made [the woman] peaceful” (Line 6) when her mind is “simple as a fire” (Line 7) and her “beauty like a tightened bow” (Line 8). The speaker identifies these “solitary and most stern” (Line 10) characteristics as belonging to a different period of time.

The speaker’s last two questions consist of only one line each. The third question, “what could she have done, being what she is” (Line 11), is a simplified restatement of the previous two questions. The speaker then asks, finally, whether there was “another Troy for her to burn” (Line 12).