poems 1189a fire” (l. 7). Based on Yeats’s biography, the female
figure in his poems is often seen as Maud Gonne,
a woman to whom the poet proposed several times
but who always rebuffed him. Gonne was known for
her beauty as well as her work as an Irish nationalist.
“No Second Troy” ends with the speaker deciding he
cannot blame her “being what she is” (l. 11) but asks
himself “was there another Troy for her to burn?”
(l. 12), recalling Helen, the legendary woman over
whom the Trojan War was fought.
Another reference to Maud Gonne appears in
“Easter 1916” (1921), a poem about a revolt in which
Irish nationalists attempted a coup of occupying
British forces. The speaker produces a catalogue
of heroes of the Rising, including a man “I had
dreamed / A drunken, vainglorious lout” (31–32)
who he says had “done most bitter wrong / To
some who are near my heart” (33–34). This man is
identified as Major John MacBride, Maud Gonne’s
husband. Even though the speaker had initially had
taken a dim view of this man, he says he will now
“number him in the song” (35) he sings about the
revolutionaries.
“Easter 1916” also emphasizes the love for coun-
try that appears throughout Yeats’s work. “The Lake
Isle of Innisfree” (1893) may be his best-known
poem about love of place. Here the speaker dreams
of going to live in the idyllic Irish countryside, where
he will “a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles
made” (2). Yeats imagines going back to live on his
own, in close proximity with nature, inspired by
the American writer Henry David Thoreau’s time
spent living at Walden Pond.
The poet’s intense love for his land at times
produces despair, as in “September 1913” (1914) in
which several stanzas end by declaring, “Romantic
Ireland’s dead and gone, / It’s with O’Leary in the
grave” (7–8). Yeats admired John O’Leary, an Irish
patriot who was banished from the country but
returned in 1885. Yeats offers the Irish advice in his
late poem “Under Ben Bulben” (1939). The poem
shows that although he might hold doubt about the
country’s political present, as expressed in “Septem-
ber 1913,” his love for the land will not cease. He
admonishes Irish poets to “learn your trade / Sing
whatever is well made” (68–69), and ends the sec-
tion by telling the poets to look to the past so “That
we in coming days may be / Still the indomitable
Irishry” (82–83).
Love of family is a theme of Yeats’s poem “A
Prayer for My Daughter” (1921). Here the speaker
hopes his daughter will be beautiful, “yet not /
Beauty to make a stranger’s eye distraught” (17–18).
The poet looks on his child while she sleeps in her
cradle, recalling Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem
“Frost at Midnight,” which does the same. Yeats’s
speaker hopes that his daughter will “think opinions
are accursed” since they lead to “intellectual hatred,”
and he hopes she will not be ruined by hatred like
another woman he knows (57–58).
The poet’s own love for literature and drama
is apparent in such works as “The Fascination of
What’s Difficult” (1910), in which his theater work
“Has dried the sap out of my veins”; and “The Cir-
cus Animals’ Desertion” (1939), in which the speaker
asks, “What can I but enumerate old themes?” (9).
Yeats then recounts the characters and concerns that
have occupied his long writing career. Even though
these two poems illustrate the difficulty of the liter-
ary artist’s work, they also show Yeats’s deep com-
mitment to the hard work that filled his life and his
intense love for it.
Joe MoffettnatIonaLISm in the poems of William
Butler Yeats
In 1800, the Act of Union dissolved the Irish par-
liament. It would not be until 1922 that the Irish
Free State would achieve the home rule it longed
for. William Butler Yeats was among Ireland’s most
passionate champions, working through his poetry,
prose, and drama to explore Irish culture and to
write about Irish problems. While plays like Cath-
leen Ni Houlihan (1902) and Deirdre (1907) helped
Yeats further his nationalistic mission by focusing on
mythological figures, perhaps his poems represent
the best place to witness his skill in producing politi-
cally motivated work that retains a strong aesthetic
value.
Nationalism appears in Yeats’s poetry in many
ways. Among his early work, “The Lake Isle of
Innisfree” (1893) represents a yearning for a return
to an idyllic Irish setting, with the speaker of the
poem standing “on the roadway, or on the pave-