Maud Gonne

"But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,/ And loved the sorrows of your changing face." Born December 21, 1866, Maud Gonne was an Anglo-Irish actress, suffragette, and Irish republican leader to worked for many years for Home Rule. She co-founded the organization that became the foundation for the Sinn Féin party. She founded Inghinidhe na hÉireann ("Daughters of Ireland"), an influential women's literary society. She also worked for programs for the hungry, for debt relief, and for prisoners. A tall person--at least 6' and possibly taller--with a background in theatre, she was a compelling public speaker. Unfortunately, she also held antisemitic views. Gonne was the muse of poet W. B. Yeats, who proposed to her unsuccessfully four times, and who even proposed to her daughter. Gonne didn't want to adopt Yeats' Catholicism, and she believed he was insufficiently passionate about Irish nationalism. Many of his poems were written for or about her: The Countess Cathleen, A Woman Homer Sung, No Second Troy, When You Are Old, The Rose of the World, He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven, and others. He also wrote of her in poems like Easter 1916 ("That woman's days were spent/ In ignorant good-will,/ Her nights in argument/ Until her voice grew shrill....") and Among School Children:

I dream of a Ledaean body, bent

Above a sinking fire, a tale that she

Told of a harsh reproof, or trivial event

That changed some childish day to tragedy—

Told, and it seemed that our two natures blent

Into a sphere from youthful sympathy,

Or else, to alter Plato's parable,

Into the yolk and white of the one shell.

Gonne knew that Yeats' poetry was part of her own legacy. She told him that posterity would be glad that she rejected his proposals, considering how he transformed his sadness into immortal verse.

(I used to read a lot of Yeats' poetry and I enjoy Irish history!)

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