No Second Troy

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1916

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Symbols & Motifs

Fire and Heat

“No Second Troy” plays with a longstanding literary motif between fire, heat, and passion. The connection draws from ancient beliefs in bodily humors, or fluids, which were believed to determine a person’s temperament or personality. Based on these theories, women were believed to be cold and wet, while men were hot and dry. Too much heat, in a female, was considered dangerous, as it could cause anger, ambition, and irrational behavior.

While the humoral theory was long discredited by the time of Yeats’s writing, its conclusions became part of common folk knowledge and created phrases like “burning passion.” Yeats’s speaker draws on these ancient ideas when they rhyme “fire” (Line 7) and “desire” (Line 5), emphasizing the deep connection between the element and the beloved’s drive. Similarly, when the speaker asks “[w]hat could have made [the woman] peaceful” (Line 6) when her mind is “simple as a fire” (Line 7), they suggest that a mind made like “fire” (Line 7) is inherently violent and ambitious.

Troy

Troy is an ancient city located in present-day Turkey. The city is known as the site of the mythological Trojan War, which is featured most famously in Homer’s Iliad. In “No Second Troy,” Yeats uses Troy as a symbol to help mythologize the modern-day love affair the poem depicts, comparing his beloved to Helen of Troy and the Trojan conflict she inspired. In linking his experience of love with the same violence and frustrated passion of the Troy myth, the speaker suggests that there is something timeless and heroic about love’s beauty and brutality, but that it no longer finds the same epic outlets as before.

The speaker thus uses the symbolism of Troy to create a contrast between the mythological world of love and violence and his own contemporary era. The speaker believes his beloved’s beauty and high-mindedness could “[h]ave taught to ignorant men most violent ways” (Line 3) if they “[h]ad […] courage equal to desire” (Line 5), implying that such epic conflicts over love are no longer possible in the modern world as men no longer have the same “courage” (Line 5) as before. The poem’s closing rhetorical question, “Was there another Troy for her to burn?” (Line 12), suggests that, as the title states, since there is “No Second Troy” the woman’s beauty and power is reduced to inspiring “misery” (Line 2) in the passive speaker instead of inducing feats of large-scale heroism and sacrifice like the Trojan War.

Helen of Troy

Daughter of Zeus and Leda, Helen of Troy is a mythological figure noteworthy for her beauty. Helen was married to the Spartan King Menelaus, but had an affair with Paris of Troy, sparking the war between Greece and Troy. While Yeats’s speaker does not explicitly mention Helen in “No Second Troy,” the poem’s final line suggests Helen as a symbol for the speaker’s beloved. Yeats frequently invokes Helen as a symbol when talking about his relationship to Maud Gonne in his poetry, and “No Second Troy” is best understood as a continuation of that motif (See: Background). In comparing his beloved to a symbol of legendary beauty, the speaker both elevates his beloved and their love affair to the status of quasi-myth, while also suggesting that there may be something dangerous and treacherous about the beloved, and even the emotion of love itself.