One
of the most three common themes of William Butler Yeats’ poetry is love; other
two being the Irish nationalism and mysticism. He is well-recognized as a love
poet in English literature, though his love poems are in many ways differ from love
poems of such love poets as Donne and Marvell. The emotional power in many of
Yeats' early poems is shaped by the one-sidedness but the poems themselves
remain hopeful and bitter-sweet, pure in their language and attitudes about
love. Most of Yeats’ love poems are dedicated consciously or subconsciously to
Maud Gonne, Yeats’ unfulfilled one-sided love. Yeats love poems are simple,
lyrical, and often dreamy, and they speak knowingly of innocence and beauty,
passion and desire, devotion and the fear of rejection.
Prior
to analyzing Yeats’ love poems we must know about Yeats emotion to Maud Gonne
as his whole life as well as his writings are dominated by his feelings toward
this woman. In 1889,
Yeats met the Irish patriot, revolutionary, and beauty Maud Gonne. She quickly
became the object of his unwavering affection and remained so for the rest of
his life; virtually every reference to a beloved in Yeats’s poetry can be
understood as a reference to Maud Gonne. Tragically, Gonne did not return his
love and rejected his marriage proposal for five times. Though they remained
closely associated as she portrayed the lead role in several of his plays, but
they were never romantically involved. At one stage, Maud Gonne got married to MacBride
and Yeats’ love poetry after that came to have much more poignancy. The sense
of loss resulting from this failure is informed by most of his poems written
after this such as “No Second Troy”, “When You Are Old”, “The Tower” etc. Even
we find in the poem “A Prayer For My Daughter” which Yeats writes after the
birth of his daughter also reflects his uncanny love for Maud Gonne. So, we can
say Maud Gonne is the love of Yeats’ life. Though Yeats cannot be united with
Maud Gonne but through his poems Maud Gonne and he remain inseparable.
Now, let us analyze some of Yeats’
poems individually to trace out how love appears in these poems-
It is totally impossible to understand Yeats’ attitude toward love without reading “No Second Troy” and “When You Are Old”. These two poems are superb examples of Yeats’ love poems where the uncanny love of a lover is expressed toward his beloved though the beloved is indifferent to his love. With the above autobiographical information it is not difficult to understand that the indifferent beloved is no one but Maud Gonne.
In the poem "When You Are
Old," an anonymous narrator requests of a former lover to remember her
youth and his love for her, creating a surreal sense of mystery that only
reveals some shadows of his own past love life. The narrator seems to be full
of regret that, with the passage of time, she never took advantage of his love
for her, and that he had to watch her age without his unconditional love from
afar. The woman, in the present, will see what an opportunity she is missing by
ignoring his love for her and leaving him to fade into the past. Yeats chooses
not to directly say that he is the narrator to match the mysterious qualities
of the third stanza, but in doing so, he has allowed the reader to interpret
some secrets of himself. This sad and reminiscent poem is not designed
primarily to make an old woman regretful, but to keep a young woman from
ignoring the narrator and making the wrong decision. Yeats hopes that the
distressing ending to his poem will cause the reader to reconsider her future
and not to grow old without him by her side.
Yeats's poem "No Second
Troy" is undoubtedly about Maud Gonne. Though the lady is not named in the
poem but everyone knew in 1910 that it was Maud Gonne. Unlike many other
heroines, Maud Gonne lives a separate life with her distinct personality in
Yeats's works. The poem remains masterpiece of controlled rhetoric used to
express intense passion in a dramatic and indirect way. Yeats has few equals in
English poetry in the way he has immortalized the beauty and charm of Maud
Gonne in this poem:
“With
beauty like a tightened bow, a kind
That
is not natural in an age like this,
Being high and solitary and most
stern?”
The poem finishes by saying that the
way she turned out was beyond her control; she was born to push the boundaries
and challenge authority. Maud is like Helen of Troy, who was the cause of the
Trojan War and it's destruction.
After
the marriage of Maud Gonne, the most poignant expression of Yeats’ come in the
poem “The Tower”:
“Does
the imagination dwell the most
Upon
a woman won or woman lost?”
Comparison with other love poets:
Many other English poets including
the modern poets tried their pen in love poems.
The Love Song of J. Alfred Frufock
by Eliot is also a love poem. Eliot’s love poem is anti-romantic in the
sense that the lover never wholly gives himself fro love. But Yeats’ love poems
are based on the actual passion felt by the day to day lovers to their beloved.
Yeats celebrates the eagerness of the lovers to make love. There are other features in which Yeats
differs from Eliot like Eliot is not politically conscious in his love poems.
On the other hand Yeats highly conscious about contemporary politics in his
love poems. Eliot portrays the decadence of love. Yeats portrays the
frustration of unfulfilled love.
To
conclude, Maud Gonne once told Yeats that he would must thank her refusing to
marry him and the world should be inclined to agree with her, because out of
that refusal sprang some of the best love poems in English literature. Thus, we
can say that love is one of the main features of Yeats poetry. He wrote love
poems in all stages of his career. But most of the time his love poems are
based on the frustration of unrequited love rather than on the fulfillment of
love.