Disenchantment with the Modern Age in Yeats's "No Second Troy" "No Second Troy" expresses the vision the most direct Yeats has of Maud Gonne, the headstrong Irish nationalist. he loved unrequitedly throughout his life. The poem deals with Yeats's disenchantment with the modern age: blind to true beauty, unheroic, and unworthy of the ancient nobility and heroism of Maud Gonne. “Ignorant men,” without “courage equal to desire,” embody Yeats’s responsibility for his failed attempts to obtain the love of Maud Gonne. The poet's vision of his beloved Helen of Troy externalizes his blame by exposing the modern era's lack of courage and its inability to temper the stubborn heroism and timeless beauty of Maud Gonne. Yeats wrote this poem in December 1908, relatively early in his lifelong relationship with Maud. Here we go. In a letter to his father dated December 29, 1908, Yeats writes from Paris and mentions having lunch with Maud Gonne that afternoon. This was after a three-year period in which Maud Gonne socially distanced herself following the breakdown of her first marriage in 1905. Although he had seen Maud Gonne around the time he wrote the poem , and there being no documented disagreement, "No Second Troy" is in the past tense, indicating that he abandoned their romantic relationship. The first half of the poem begins with the poet expressing his growing disapproval of Maud Gonne's policies. He wonders if he should “blame him for filling my days with misery.” A. Norman Jeffares writes in WB Yeats that "the 'lately' of the second line refers to Maud Gonne's withdrawal", but the poem seems to blame her inactivity on "ignorant men" who do not have "courage equal to desire" , rather than his marital problems. These “ig...... middle of paper...... the timelessness of his beloved also appears in “Reconciliation”. Yeats writes, "Some may have blamed you for carrying away the verses," leading the poet to write of "kings, / Helmets, swords, and forgotten things / That were like memories of you ". These poems connect the poet's vision of Maud Gonne as a woman lost in time, possessing, as Giorgio Melchiori writes, a "proud beauty and fire...in which a noble past collides with a mediocre present." “No Second Troy” attempts to deal with the failure of Yeats's relationship with Maud Gonne without placing the blame on his beloved or himself. The poet criticizes the era in which they live and attributes its inability to endure the burning of Troy to ideal beauty. In an age of "ignorant men" whose lack of courage cannot embrace the stoic beauty of Maud Gonne, there is no second Troy to burn..