How is Maud Gonne presented in Yeats’ poetry?

Answer

How is Maud Gonne presented in Yeats’ poetry? Discuss with reference to his poems you have read.  [2021]

William Butler Yeats’s (1865-1939) love for Maud Gonne shaped much of his poetry. She was beautiful, proud, and politically active. Yeats loved her deeply, but she did not love him in return. His poems show her as both a goddess and a cause of pain. Through her, Yeats expressed love, loss, and spiritual beauty. In poems like “No Second Troy,” “Among School Children,” and “He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven,” Maud Gonne appears as his muse, dream, and divine symbol.

Divine Beauty and Ideal Woman: In “He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven,” Yeats presents Maud as his goddess. The speaker wishes to lay “the heavens’ embroidered cloths” under her feet. It shows his wish to give her everything beautiful. But he is “poor” and has only his “dreams” to offer. Maud becomes the center of his vision of divine beauty. He expresses his deep emotional fear and tender respect through the following line. 

“Tread softly because you tread on my dreams”

Proud and Destructive Heroine: In “No Second Troy,” Maud Gonne is shown as noble, proud, and dangerous. Yeats asks, 

“Why should I blame her that she filled my days with misery?” 

This shows his personal pain. Yet, he cannot hate her. He compares her to Helen of Troy, whose beauty caused war. Her “beauty like a tightened bow” means both charm and destruction. She is “high and solitary and most stern,” living like a heroic figure from an ancient time. Yeats admires her courage and purity but fears her power. To him, Maud is like fire—bright and strong, but painful to touch. 

Memory and Idealization: In “Among School Children,” Yeats meets young students and remembers Maud’s youth. He imagines her as a child, “that Ledaean body, bent above a sinking fire.” The word “Ledaean” links her to myth, like Helen of Troy again. He sees her as both woman