Why should I blame her[footnote]Maud Gonne, the beautiful Irish revolutionary leader, whom Yeats loved for much of his life.\u00a0She was to him the reincarnation of Helen of Troy, in the ancient world a major trading port in what is now Turkey.\u00a0Helen was so beautiful, she was abducted by the Trojan Paris, and her husband, Menelaus, King of the Greek city of Sparta, attacked Troy to get her back.[\/footnote]\u00a0that she filled my days\nWith misery[footnote]Yeats proposed to Maud, but she admitted to him she had two children with a married French journalist.\u00a0Later, she married John MacBride, a major in the Irish Republican Army, a man Yeats despised.\u00a0 (cf. \u201cEaster, 1916\u201d).[\/footnote], or that she would of late\nHave taught to ignorant men most violent ways,\nOr hurled the little streets upon the great.\nHad they but courage equal to desire?\nWhat could have made her peaceful with a mind\nThat nobleness made simple as a fire,\nWith beauty like a tightened bow, a kind\nThat is not natural in an age like this,\nBeing high and solitary and most stern?\nWhy, what could she have done, being what she is?\nWas there another Troy for her to burn?\n\n\u2014<\/b>\u00a01910.<\/p>","rendered":"
Why should I blame her[1]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0that she filled my days \u2014<\/b>\u00a01910.<\/p>\n\n\t\t\t
\nWith misery[2]<\/sup><\/a>, or that she would of late
\nHave taught to ignorant men most violent ways,
\nOr hurled the little streets upon the great.
\nHad they but courage equal to desire?
\nWhat could have made her peaceful with a mind
\nThat nobleness made simple as a fire,
\nWith beauty like a tightened bow, a kind
\nThat is not natural in an age like this,
\nBeing high and solitary and most stern?
\nWhy, what could she have done, being what she is?
\nWas there another Troy for her to burn?<\/p>\nCandela Citations<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t\t