January 26

Yeats poems are quite interesting.  They often have contradicting ideologies within a single poem and he seems to write about love quite often.  After reading Yeats Biography, I began reading his poetry and trying to decide which poems were about his one love Maud Gonne who became a political extremist and was said to have been written about in some of Yeats poetry up to the end.  "He Wishes for the Cloths" is a poem that I feel explains what happened with Maud and Yeats.  He offered up his dreams and love to Maud and hoped that she would accept him and all that included and "tread lightly", but in real life she does not tread lightly and takes an action that severs their connections completely.  Another poem, "The Song of Wandering Aengus", could be interpreted as being before Maud took her politicality to the extreme and when Yeats was endeavoring for her hand in marriage.  There was "fire...in my head" because he couldn't get her to accept the proposal, but he kept searching for that "glimmering girl" in hopes of her accepting him.  If these assumptions are correct, then it is quite an insight into a man's mind who was tormented by a woman who could have cared less.