No Second Troy

“No Second Troy” builds on a number of tensions between the speaker and his unnamed female love interest. The key tension that this analysis investigates is that between the speaker’s passive questioning and the unnamed woman’s active mind and beauty. The speaker’s inability to engage with his love interest except through metaphors demonstrates his larger inability to engage with reality. Meanwhile, the metaphors that the speaker uses to distance himself from his love interest portray her as a supreme motivational force who both acts and compels action in others. This tension, rather than showing the two lovers either in balance or as complementary to one another, points toward the two’s essential incompatibility.

The speaker’s reliance on questions and literary metaphors underlines his disconnection from the world that his love interest inhabits. The speaker finds himself preoccupied with unresolved questions and is unable to assert himself in the world. The poem’s form, grammatically, consists entirely of questions (See: Literary Devices). The speaker’s preoccupation with questions like “[w]hat could have made her peaceful” (Line 6) demonstrate his willingness to ponder an abstract, potential lover rather than the one actually before him. Instead of focusing on the love interest’s real qualities, the speaker directs his interrogations toward imagined versions of her. Asking “[w]hy should I blame her” (Line 1) or “[w]hat could have made her peaceful” (Line 6) open a speculative space for the speaker to imagine a more idealized, accommodating love interest. This idealization is most evident when the speaker compares her to Helen of Troy (See: Symbols & Motifs), asking “[w]as there another Troy for her to burn” (Line 12). Comparing his love interest to Helen of Troy suggests the woman’s semi-mythical qualities.

Despite the speaker’s insistence that his love interest’s qualities are “not natural in an age like this” (Line 9), his presentation of her reveals her to be a practical, action-oriented person. Each of the speaker’s four questions center around actions performed by the love interest. He wonders about how she “filled [his] days” (Line 1), speculates about her having “taught to ignorant men most violent ways” (Line 3), and, more generally, “what could she have done, being what she is” (Line 11). The speaker’s second question strikes at the heart of their conflict, asking “[w]hat could have made her peaceful with a mind / [t]hat nobleness made simple as fire” (Lines 6-7). The speaker presents the beloved’s drive to action as elemental to her being, “made simple as fire” (Line 7). He depicts her mind as being opposed to “peace” (Line 6), suggesting her incapable of the stillness required for the speaker’s abstract contemplations. The speaker’s wondering how his love interest can be made “peaceful” (Line 6), likewise, highlights his own desire for a peaceful existence.

The speaker’s diction (or word choice) highlights his need for peace by condemning the violence inherent in his love interest’s actions. The “peace” (Line 6) that the speaker argues his beloved is incapable of implicates her in violent, war-like actions. The speaker compares his beloved’s beauty to a “tightened bow” (Line 8), encapsulating both the fashion accessory and the deadly, long-ranged weapon (See: Themes). Similarly, the speaker’s accusation that she teaches men “most violent ways” (Line 3) underlines the speaker’s violent assumptions. The speaker’s assumption that the beloved incites violent actions in “ignorant men” (Line 3), meanwhile, furthers the divide between the intellectual speaker and his active beloved. By signaling out “ignorant men,” the speaker implies that educated people—himself included—know better than the beloved’s lessons can teach. The speaker reinforces his separation from the “ignorant men” by suggesting they have “courage equal to desire” (Line 5). The speaker’s inability to engage with life directly suggests that he himself lacks such courage.

While he lacks courage, the speaker’s longing for his beloved throughout the poem suggests he has ample desire. The speaker’s rhyming of “desire” (Line 5) and “fire” (Line 8) suggests that he does share some qualities and passions with his beloved. However, the speaker acknowledges that the beloved’s violent beauty “is not natural in an age like this” (Line 9). Despite the speaker’s tenuous connection through desire, he stills views his beloved through an abstracted lens, suggesting that the beloved belongs to a different age. The poem’s third question summarizes the speaker’s larger struggle. The speaker asks “[w]hy, what could she have done, being what she is” (Line 11). This hesitant beginning, moving from “[w]hy” to “what” mirrors the start of the first and second question, respectively, and signals that this third question attempts to aggregate them. The emphasis on what the beloved “could have done” (Line 11) places her in an abstracted hypothetical, but one that affirms her as an actor.

The speaker’s movement to the final question, “was there a second Troy for her to burn” (Line 12), recognizes the beloved’s essential, active nature. However, the speaker’s constant reaching toward abstract, mythological metaphors such as Troy blocks any real reconciliation between the two. The speaker of “No Second Troy” appears to be self-aware that he is too invested in abstract ideas and idle questioning to win his beloved, while the comparison between the beloved and Helen of Troy suggests that there remains something alluring and yet deadly about her beauty and strength.