Enam's Note

  " No Second Troy " by William Butler Yeats, a great Irish poet, is poem about the love relationship between the poet and Maud Gonne , devastatingly beautiful Irish woman. It is one of the great literary love stories of the 20th century. The poem hints that how an alluring dazzling beauty can cause a devastating massive distraction with the reference to Helen of Troy, from the Iliad and the Aeneid . Now we will critically look into the poem. Before discussing the poem, let us have a look at the background of the poem. Yeats, in fact, published the poem in 1916 in the collection “ Responsibilities and Other Poems” , after he had already proposed to Gonne; and been rejected on numerous occasions. Yeats was obsessed with her and pursued her for over a decade and dedicated many of his poems to her. In this poem, however, Yeats's attitude is somewhat harsh, as he compares Gonne with the infamously beautiful and notoriously mi...