No Second Troy

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1916

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Themes

The Allure of Mythological Prehistory

Yeats’s reliance on the Trojan War as a metaphor in “No Second Troy” places the poem between his contemporary Ireland and the mythological prehistory of Western civilization. The differences between these two eras create much of the poem’s tensions—particularly when the speaker suggests their beloved belongs to that earlier and more heroic era. The poem’s rhyme scheme places “late” (Line 2) and “great” (Line 4) together, signaling the speaker’s larger belief that the age of great wars and heroism is past.

These tensions come to the forefront when the speaker dismisses their beloved’s passion by saying her mind “is not natural in an age like this” (Line 9). This claim that the speaker’s love interest belongs to a different era points toward the “another Troy” (Line 12) in the poem’s last line and title. The speaker sees the woman’s mind as unnatural because it is a “a mind / [t]hat nobleness made simple as fire” (Lines 6-7). This simplicity speaks both to the basic, elemental nature of fire, and to the beloved’s burning, violent passion. Like the uncomplicated, passion-driven figures of mythology, the beloved is a figure belonging to the past. The speaker’s emphasis that such simple minds are “not natural in an age like this” (Line 9) underlines the growing complexity of political and social concerns in the early 20th century. This complexity also paralyzes the poem’s speaker.

Despite the speaker’s recognition that this mind comes from “nobleness,” he struggles to match such nobility to the burning of a second Troy. The “high and solitary and most stern” (Line 10) qualities that the speaker sees in his beloved’s mind reflect the rigid ideals that encouraged violence and self-sacrifice. The solitary nature of her mind, in particular, emphasizes its unidirectionality and inability to view events from a wider lens. The speaker is unable to act in the contemporary world (See: Poem Analysis), but his passive understanding of mythological prehistory implies an insight into current affairs that people on the ground might struggle to see.

The Struggle Between Thought and Action

The struggle between thought and action is evident not only in “No Second Troy” (See: Poem Analysis), but in Homer’s Iliad, to which “No Second Troy” alludes. The Iliad is the most famous text which details the mythological Trojan War. For the first 15 books of Homer’s epic poem, Achilles, the greatest Greek warrior, refuses to fight. Achilles’s refusal comes after he is dishonored by Agamemnon. Instead of fighting, Achilles spends much of the early Iliad mourning the loss of his honor and praying for the Trojans to gain advantage on the battlefield. In other words, Achilles spends much of the Iliad reluctant to engage in action, just as the speaker of “No Second Troy” regards the potential for heroic but “violent ways” with ambivalence.

While the speaker of Yeats’s poem does not subscribe to martial virtues, he places himself in a similar position to Homer’s Achilles. The “misery” (Line 2) that his beloved “filled [their] days / [w]ith” (Lines 1-2) at the opening of the poem is not dissimilar to Achilles’s dishonor, and his general inactivity reflects Achilles’s. The main difference between the two is that Yeats’s speaker lacks “courage equal to desire” (Line 5), suggesting that, in the modern age, it is not so much greater refinement that prevents violent passions or warlike actions but a greater timidity that makes the feats of classical epics an impossibility in the modern world.

Love as a Battlefield

The overlap between military and romantic pursuits is a common motif in much of Western poetry. The mythological Trojan War, like the struggle in “No Second Troy,” was fought over an idealized beauty. By comparing his beloved to Helen of Troy (See: Symbols & Motifs), Yeats’s speaker presents love as a battlefield. Though this overlap between love and war often carries sexist connotations insofar as it tends to compare women to war spoils, Yeats’s poem avoids this trap by placing the beloved in a position of power.

The most obvious place that love and war overlap is in the speaker’s pun on the beloved’s beauty. He compares it to “a tightened bow” (Line 8), which denotes both a restrictive fashion accessory and an archer’s drawn weapon. The beloved’s beauty, like the speaker’s desire for her, is therefore heavily restricted and liable to cause severe damage if released. The power of her beauty is comparable to Helen’s, whose beauty famously launched a thousand ships. While the love interest’s single arrow is minuscule compared to Helen’s armada, its violence is of the same type. This type of violence is particularly poignant as the speaker’s emphasis on archaic, manual weapons points back to older, mythological battlefields.

By characterizing the beloved’s beauty with this violent play on words, the speaker draws on the mythological relationship between the Greek gods Ares and Aphrodite. Ares, the god of war, and Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty, have a number of clandestine relationships in Greek mythology. Despite Aphrodite’s marriage to Hephaestus, the god of craft, her adulterous relationship with Ares results in a number of children, including Eros, the god of love.

This deep, mythological connection between beauty, war, and love is present in many ancient works. This implicit connection between beauty and war is what makes Yeats’s speaker ask “[w]hat could have made her peaceful” (Line 6) as if war is an essential feature of her character. This connection is also what requires men to have “courage equal to desire” (Line 5) in order to act on their “most violent ways” (Line 3): Their courage draws on a warrior-like virtue, while their desire depends on a kind of beauty or love. In comparing his contemporary beloved to Helen of Troy, the speaker suggests that there is something about the love-and-war duality that remains timeless even if it can no longer achieve the same epic scale as before.