They were a difficult, mismatched pair, she an ardent Republican who spent the whole of her life urging the Dublin crowd to throw off the shackles of the British Empire, and he every inch a great Irish poet in the making, though the earlier fin-de-siècle languor was gradually to be replaced by a patrician hauteur. They had in common a certain mystical nationalism, a belief that the Irish people, properly spiritually cleansed and directed, could indeed enter into its birthright of greatness, a birthright long misplaced.
They had first met in 1889, and Yeats was to recall that meeting in a poem written during old age: “Maud Gonne at Howth Station waiting for a train,/ Pallas Athene in that straight back and arrogant head.” She was a strikingly tall woman, who always dressed in black; they cut quite a dash together at Dublin’s Abbey Theatre.
Their common interests included a belief in spiritualism—Gonne often spoke of her being with him on an astral plane, though absent in body—and this included a conviction that Ireland possessed hidden forces, waiting to be marshalled.
Unfortunately, the means divided them. Maud Gonne saw herself as belonging among the people; Yeats abhorred the common herd.
Unfortunately, the means divided them. Maud Gonne saw herself as belonging among the people; Yeats abhorred the common herd. It was his great purpose to build a national literature, which would ultimately transcend national identity. Maud Gonne respected him for that and recognized his