ar and tender respect through the following line.
“Tread softly because you tread on my dreams”
Proud and Destructive Heroine: In “No Second Troy,” Maud Gonne is shown as noble, proud, and dangerous. Yeats asks,
“Why should I blame her that she filled my days with misery?”
This shows his personal pain. Yet, he cannot hate her. He compares her to Helen of Troy, whose beauty caused war. Her “beauty like a tightened bow” means both charm and destruction. She is “high and solitary and most stern,” living like a heroic figure from an ancient time. Yeats admires her courage and purity but fears her power. To him, Maud is like fire—bright and strong, but painful to touch.
Memory and Idealization: In “Among School Children,” Yeats meets young students and remembers Maud’s youth. He imagines her as a child, “that Ledaean body, bent above a sinking fire.” The word “Ledaean” links her to myth, like Helen of Troy again. He sees her as both woman and symbol. Through memory, he joins her beauty with ideas of time and art. When he sees the children, he wonders if Maud once stood like them. The poem ends with a question,
“How can we know the dancer from the dance?”
This line showing that Maud’s image and Yeats’s art are now one.
Source of Inspiration and Suffering: Maud Gonne inspired Yeats’s highest art but also gave him sorrow. She refused his marriage proposals many times. Yet he never stopped loving her. His poems show both worship and heartbreak. Her rejection made his poetry deeper and more spiritual. She becomes the symbol of unfulfilled desire. In his verses, love turns into art, and pain turns into beauty. His imagination finds meaning in loss.
Blend of Love, Politics, and Myth: Maud Gonne was also a revolutionary. In “No Second Troy,” Yeats connects her political passion with her beauty. Her spirit “taught to ignorant men most violent ways.” He admires her courage but dislikes her violence. She stands between political fire and poetic grace. To express her power, Yeats uses Greek myth and Irish legend. She becomes both a national symbol and a personal dream. Thus, Yeats combines love, myth, and politics into a single poetic image of Maud Gonne.
In Yeats’s poetry, Maud Gonne is not just a woman. She is beauty, a dream, and a destiny. He presents her as a goddess, muse, and memory. She gives light to his art and pain to his heart. Through her, Yeats connects love with imagination and history with myth.
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