April is National Poetry Month!

I was actually introduced to Yeats by the partial recitation of this poem between verses in the Cranberries' song "Yeat's Grave." Many years later, I learned the backstory, which goes something like this: Yeats totally dug Maud Gonne, but she dug someone else. Gonne was involved with/associated with radical political factions, and I secretly suspect that would have bothered Yeats less if she liked him instead of that other guy.

The moral of this story is that I am not your go-to girl for Irish cultural history.

W.B. Yeats, "No Second Troy."


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?