The poetry of William Butler Yeats has been categorized as the work of a dreamer, an escapist infatuated with lake isles, hazel woods, spooks and faeries, the lost enchantment of the Celtic Twilight.  Whatever the origins of his genius, many scholars consider Yeats to be one of the finest poets of the twentieth century.

The love relationship between Yeats and Maude Gonne, the ravishing, revolutionary Irish beauty, is a truly astonishing story of passionate, unrequited love spanning fifty years of Irish history from 1889 to 1939.

Drawing upon material contained in the book The Love Story of Yeats and Maude Gonne by Margery Brady and W. B.Yeats-Collected Poems, there emerges a stunning tale of unrequited love, revolutionary intrigues, and broken hearts.

Yeats was born in 1865 in Dublin, the oldest child in a family of five children.  As a young man living in London Yeats was always homesick for his mother's place in Sligo.  It is said that one day while walking along Fleet Street in London Yeats heard a gurgling sound and came upon a water fountain in a shop window.  Memories of Sligo and his mother's home came flooding back, inspiring him to write one of his most famous poems, THE LAKE ISLE OF INNISFREE.

THE LAKE ISLE OF INNISFREE

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made,
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

In January 1889 when Yeats was twenty three he first met Maude Gonne when she came to visit his family in London.  Maude was very tall, with red-gold hair and hazel eyes, a twenty two year old, tempestuous, extraordinarily beautiful young woman whom Yeats could never quite fully understand.

Born in Surrey, England, Maude was the eldest of three girls.  Her father was an officer in the English army who saw service in India.  Maud was one year old when the family moved from England to Dublin, Ireland.

When Maude was ten her father Tommy Gonne rented a cottage in Cannes in the south of France and hired a French woman as governess.  Her father went off to India to serve in the British Army, returning to France when Maud was sixteen.  He then took her back to Dublin where she was launched into society, attending many parties. 

While recovering from a bout of illness at a spa in central France Maud met Lucien Millevoye a lawyer and journalist.  Maude and Lucien fell in love.  A married man with a son, Lucien had recently separated from his wife.  Shortly thereafter Maud conceived a child by Lucien.  Their son Georges was born in January, 1890.

Maude became very sympathetic to the Irish Republican cause.  Before the birth of her son she had been back in Ireland making speeches on behalf of Irish peasants who were being evicted from their homes for failing to pay their rents.  During these visits to Ireland she frequently met Willie and their friendship grew.  He wrote her poems, which flattered her.  He was hopelessly in love but he had not told her of this love, partly because he could not envision her as the wife of a poor student.