The Gonne-Yeats Letters 1893-1938 (Irish Studies)
Maud Gonne and William Butler Yeats met in early 1889, and he  first proposed to her--unsuccessfully--two years later. Some of Yeats's  greatest poems chronicle his long obsession with her, among them  "A Woman Homer Sang," "Reconciliation," and  "No Second Troy":What could have made her peaceful with a mindThat nobleness made simple as a fire,With beauty like a tightened bow, a kindThat 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?We tend to see Maud Gonne through his prism--a firebrand, a great  beauty, above all a political fanatic who made him suffer like mad.  These letters tell a more complex tale, since the majority are hers,  most of Yeats's having been destroyed. What he portrayed as extremism  instead becomes deep political involvement: her letters record an  endless round of meetings, protests, and good works. In addition, the  concern she again and again manifests for Yeats mitigates his cries of  indifference; rather, Maud Gonne emerges as steady and heroic. Even as  she was preparing to marry John MacBride, she took time out to console  her longtime suitor in a characteristic run-on: "Friend of mine au  revoir. I shall go over to Ireland in a couple of months, if you care  to see me I shall be so glad & you will find I think that I am just the  same woman you have always known, marriage won't change me I think at  all...." The editors declare the original letter "very crumpled  and creased as if carried in Yeats's pocket and taken out and read many  times."