Willy and Maud

yeats looked her in the eye and she in his

and so they stood looking and were still

never give the heart outright he'd said

but as they stood still streaming eye-to-eye

her power took him like an opiate

her heat spread brim to brim

and his heart blew open

who could play it well enough he said

if deaf and dumb and blind with love

he knew the cost     he paid it     and he lost

there was     there was a second troy for her to burn

and it was him

—in "No Second Troy," a classic poem of unrequited love, W. B. Yeats compares Irish
revolutionary Maud Gonne to the mythical Helen of Troy, the most beautiful
woman in the world, whose abduction brought about the Trojan War.