Why should I blame her that she filled my days
With misery, or that she would of late
Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,
Or hurled the little streets upon the great,
Had they but courage equal to desire?
What could have made her peaceful with a mind
That nobleness made simple as a fire,
With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind
That is not natural in an age like this,
Being high and solitary and most stern?
Why, what could she have done, being what she is?
Was there another Troy for her to burn?
This great Yeats poem deals with the poet's relationship with his beloved, Maud Gonne. A great mixture of feelings in the poem shows Yeats' own ambiguity in his emotions towards her. There are traces of reproach, admiration, jealousy and forgiveness, reflecting his real life relationship with the woman herself.
This emotional turbulence is understandable when you realise that despite several rejections of his marriage proposals Yeats remained infatuated with Maud Gonne all his life.
They first met on the 30th January, 1889. Yeats and his family were living in London at the time and Maud Gonne visited the household on Blenheim Road. She was tall, twenty-two years old, beautiful and an ardent Irish Nationalist. The twenty-three year old Yeats was immediately fascinated by her beauty and outspoken ways. She invited William to dinner that night - an invite he accepted. They subsequently spent the next nine evenings together and at the end of her stay in London Yeats was well and truly in love.
In 1891 Yeats visited Gonne in Ireland and asked her to marry him. She refused but the rejection did not dampen his feelings. He proposed several more times, each proposal meeting with a rejection.
Maud Gonne married Major john McBride in 1903 and Yeats now had to add jealousy to his mixed feelings for her. Despite her marriage though, he continued to write poetry about her and continued to admire her. He once wrote of her: "She lived in storm and strife, / Her soul had such desire." He always praised her ardent nature even while he blamed it for keeping them apart.
After McBride's death during the Easter Rising of 1916, Yeats once again proposed to Maud and once again received a rejection.
Yeats certainly had relationships with other women like Olivia Shakespeare, Lady Augusta Gregory and his wife, Georgie Hyde Lees. While these relationships were all fulfilling in their own way, his unrequited love for Maud Gonne was the one that dominated his mind and his poetry. He simply could not give up on her.
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