No Second Troy

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1916

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Form and Meter

“No Second Troy” follows a strict form reminiscent of the speaker’s beloved’s “high and solitary and most stern” (Line 10) mind. The poem consists of 12 lines of iambic pentameter. Most lines, such as “[w]hy should I blame her that she filled my days” (Line 1) have significant trochaic and spondaic substitutions. In the case of the first line, the spondee (double emphasis) on the fourth foot, “she filled” (Line 1), reflects the speaker’s feeling of fullness. Other lines, such as “[w]ith beauty like a tightened bow, a kind” (Line 8), use perfect iambic pentameter (or five feet of unstressed followed by stressed syllables) to represent the beloved’s rigid tension.

Each succession of four lines in the poem follows an ABAB alternate rhyme scheme, making the whole poem ABABCDCDEFEF. This rigid form is similar to that of a sonnet—which fits the poem’s searching tone and emphasis on an unobtainable beloved—but denies the sonnet form by only being 12 lines and not having a volta, a turn of thought or argument in the poem. The poem also deviates from conventional forms by extending its clauses beyond each rhyming section. Typically, each set of alternating rhymes should end at a completed clause. Yeats, instead, spills his speaker’s first two questions into the following set.

The poem’s most interesting formal quality is that it consists entirely of questions. Though the speaker includes a number of declarative clauses, such as “[t]hat nobleness made simple as fire” (Line 7), each sentence resolves as a question. This questioning underlines the speaker’s inaction and desire to stay with unknown abstractions (See: Poem Analysis).

Enjambment

Enjambment refers to when the meaning of one sentence or phrase carries over to the next line of poetry without punctuation. This technique is another way that Yeats expands and manipulates the poem’s otherwise rigid form. Often, enjambment allows for two concurrent readings of the sentence’s meaning—one that carries on semantically, and one that stops at the line end.

When the speaker asks why he should “blame her that she filled [his] days” (Line 1), the effect seems positive until the sentence carries over to “[w]ith misery” (Line 2) in the next line. This effect creates both a sense of the positive fullness the speaker felt when his days were filled with positive ideas of his beloved, and a sense of the misery he feels in the present. This double meaning allows the speaker to capture his complex, layered emotional state. The speaker performs similar inversions when they state that their beloved’s mind is “a kind / [t]hat is not natural” (Lines 8-9).

Rhyme

Yeats’s use of perfect rhymes—or rhymes that end in identical vowel and consonant sounds—reinforces the rigid form of “No Second Troy.” The similarity in sound between perfect rhymes also suggests deep connections between the rhymed words, and Yeats uses these rhymes to connect a number of ideas or abstract concepts. By rhyming “late” (Line 2) and “great” (Line 4), the speaker draws attention to the mythological prehistory that inspires the poem’s metaphors (See: Themes). The connections between “desire” (Line 5) and “fire” (Line 7), as well as those between “stern” (Line 10) and “burn” (Line 12), demonstrate the burning passions of the speaker’s love interest (See: Symbols & Motifs).

The speaker also uses internal rhymes to similar effect. The internal rhyme between “like” (Line 8) and “tight” (Line 8) stiffens the line by drawing those two perfect rhymes together, like the “tightened bow” (Line 8) the speaker describes. The rhyme between “she” (Line 1) and “misery” (Line 2) similarly underlines that the speaker’s unnamed love interest is the cause of his troubles.