No Second Troy

Yeats’s reliance on the Trojan War as a metaphor in “No Second Troy” places the poem between his contemporary Ireland and the mythological prehistory of Western civilization. The differences between these two eras create much of the poem’s tensions—particularly when the speaker suggests their beloved belongs to that earlier and more heroic era. The poem’s rhyme scheme places “late” (Line 2) and “great” (Line 4) together, signaling the speaker’s larger belief that the age of great wars and heroism is past.

These tensions come to the forefront when the speaker dismisses their beloved’s passion by saying her mind “is not natural in an age like this” (Line 9). This claim that the speaker’s love interest belongs to a different era points toward the “another Troy” (Line 12) in the poem’s last line and title. The speaker sees the woman’s mind as unnatural because it is a “a mind / [t]hat nobleness made simple as fire” (Lines 6-7). This simplicity speaks both to the basic, elemental nature of fire, and to the beloved’s burning, violent passion. Like the uncomplicated, passion-driven figures of mythology, the beloved is a figure belonging to the past. The speaker’s emphasis that such simple minds are “not natural in an age like this” (Line 9) underlines the growing complexity of political and social concerns in the early 20th century.