"No Second Troy" plays out through four rhetorical questions.

First, the speaker wonders "why" he should blame "her" for his unhappiness
and for her reckless manipulation of the emotions of Irish commoners to
rouse political violence.
Then he asks whether it would even have been possible for "her" to be a
"peaceful" person. He thinks her character and beauty have an old-school
quality, more like a figure from Greek tragedy than a contemporary woman.
She belongs to another age.
She could not have been anything other than what she is. Simple enough.
Last, because there was no "second Troy" for her to destroy, she had to
destroy other things like the speaker's happiness, and the lives of Irish
commoners. The first Troy, of course, was destroyed because of a quarrel
over Helen, another politically troublesome beauty from another "age":
ancient Greece.
Lines 1-2
Why should I blame her that she filled my days
With misery, []

The first question begins with "Why," and more specifically, "Why
should I blame her?"

Right from the start, one thing is clear: the speaker does blame "her."
Otherwise, he would not be wondering why he does, or should.

Sometimes it's appropriate to ignore the poet's biography when

reading a poem, but in this case, Yeats's Irish readers would have
known exactly who this "her" was: Maud Gonne.

Maud Gonne was an Irish actress and revolutionary. Yeats proposed to

her repeatedly, but she rejected him just as many times. Politically,
she was more of a radical and a nationalist than he was, which
contributed to the failure of their love affair. For more on this
dynamic, which is essential to the poem, we recommend you read "In
a Nutshell."

The speaker blames Maud Gonne for filling his life with unhappiness.
We can only assume that the reason for his "misery" is that she
rejected him again and again.

The tone at the beginning of the poem is one of anger and bitterness.
Will this trend continue?

Lines 2-3
[...]or that she would of late
Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,

Gripe #1: She didn't love him. Gripe #2 introduces politics into the
mix: recently ("of late"), she encouraged simple, "ignorant" men to be
violent.

From the reader's perspective, this is a much more serious

accusation. So she didn't love the speaker: too darned bad. But
inciting violence is serious business.

Yeats is talking about the role Maud Gonne played in encouraging

violent, revolutionary activities in Ireland during the movement for
independence.

Unlike the poor, simple souls she encouraged, Gonne was an

educated, intelligent woman from a wealthy background. From Yeats's
perspective, she should have known better. She doesn't have
"ignorance" as an excuse for her radical beliefs.

Her support for political violence is a recent development, something

that has happened "of late." She hasn't always been like this.
"You've changed, baby!"

This poem was published in 1916, the same year as the violentEaster
Rising in Ireland, in which Gonne and her husband played a role.

Lines 4-5
Or hurled the little streets upon the great,
Had they but courage equal to desire?

This is a funny image. Image a woman lifting up a small street and

throwing it on top of another street.

That's not what's happening, though. It's a metaphor. The speaker

accuses Maud Gonne of class warfare, trying to make poor, simple
people, who live in the "little streets," rebel against the more powerful
people who live on the "great" streets.

Imagine the residents of the Bronx invading the Upper East Side and
you've got an image of the little streets against the great. Except in
this case, the "great" streets are actually populated by colonizers, the
British.

Yeats was a conservative dude, and he didn't have as much faith in

the spirit and character of the commoners as Gonne did. The common
folk have the "desire" to overthrow British rule, but they don't have
the "courage" to carry out the deed. They are too impoverished and
uneducated.

Yeats thinks that stirring up trouble among such people is reckless to

the extreme.

Lines 6-7
What could have made her peaceful with a mind
That nobleness made simple as a fire,

The beginning of the second question says, in effect, "She couldn't

have turned out any other way, so what are you getting your undies
in a bunch about!"

It's a rhetorical question, so the poet is talking to himself.

Remember how we said Yeats was conservative? He's big into

aristocratic values like "nobleness," manners, and refinement.

Maud Gonne is not a simple person or commoner. She has a noble

personality, like a medieval lord...or an ancient Greek warrior.

Yeats equates nobility with "simplicity" of mind, as if Gonne's

emotions were not all muddled up and conflicted. Remember that
famous "noble" characters, like Achilles from the Iliad, are often
defined by a single, purified emotion in Achilles' case, "rage."

Maud Gonne's state of mind is captured by the word "fire," as in

"fiery." She can't be peaceful with a mind of fire.

Lines 8-9
With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind
That is not natural in an age like this,

Yeats moves from discussing Gonne's mind to discussing her

appearance. Her beauty, like her emotions, is simple. He compares
her appearance to a "tightened bow" and says that her kind of beauty
is old-school; it belongs to another age.

The string on a bow (as in bows and arrows) must be kept very tight
so that it can shoot arrows far. In Homer's ancient Greek work
theOdyssey, Odysseus's bow is so tight that only he can string it. He's
super strong.

A tightened bow looks graceful and noble, but it contains an

enormous amount of power within the tension of that single string.
Maud Gonne's beauty is the same way: graceful, but containing a
deep inner tension that only adds to the allure.

The bow is often associated with ancient Greece, and because we

know how much Yeats like dropping references to the good old
Greeks, we can say pretty confidently that the "age" in which Gonne's
beauty would seem most natural would be oh, say, a couple thousand
years ago on the Mediterranean coast.

OK, we'll bring out the hammer and hit you with it: she looks like a
character from one of Homer's epics. (Homer wrote both the Iliadand
theOdyssey).

and the
Line 10
Being high and solitary and most stern?

There he goes with more description of Gonne's noble beauty.

Doesn't this line make her sound like some kind of royalty, a queen or
princess?

She is "high," like someone haughty or of "high" birth.

She is a "solitary" person, the kind of person who is confident in her

own worth and does not need to be validated by others. She's
like,special. Also, her beauty has no comparison; it stands alone.

Finally, she is "stern," or unyielding. Not just stern, but "most stern."
Nobody's sterner than her! Actually "most" just means "really" or
"very" here.

She's like that teacher you used to have who could reduce you to a
blubbering idiot with just one "stern" glance.

She's not someone to mess with; she can hold her own.

Why, what could she have done being what she is?

So far, we have gotten one new question every five lines. But the last two
lines give us two different questions.
This line is strangely vague and general. Also, the syntax (the order of
words) is gnarled and complicated with all those verbs: "could...have,"
"done," "being," and "is."
The speaker is simultaneously thinking about some other reality in which
Maud Gonne was not such a firebrand or heartbreaker, even as he
recognizes that it could never have been any other way.
He decides that there is no point guessing about what could have been and
blaming Maud for the way she was born and raised. That's just how she is!
To make matters more confusing, Yeats even manages to squeeze two
question words into one question: the line begins, "Why, what..." We would
have liked him to work in "how" and "when," too, but not a bad effort as it
stands.
Line 12
Was there another Troy for her to burn?

The poem ends on this simple and pithy question, which is like the
punch line after an elaborate setup.

Considering that the title of the poem is "No Second Troy," we were
wondering when the ancient city of Troy was going to make its big
entrance. Yeats creates suspense by delaying this until the last line.

The mention of Troy ties together the little hints about how Maud
Gonne is like a character from an ancient Greek epic. In this line, he
compares her directly to the famous Helen of Troy.

Helen of Troy was considered the most beautiful woman in ancient

Greece, maybe even the most beautiful woman of all time.

Helen was also seen as being responsible for the Trojan War when she
ran off with the Trojan Prince Paris, abandoning her husband King
Menelaus, who became very, very angry.

Helen's was "the face that launched a thousand ships." She was
viewed from then on, rightly or wrongly, as a beautiful troublemaker.

At the end of the war, Troy is burned to the ground and lots of people
die.

The speaker is saying that, if there had been another Troy for Maud to
burn, she would have burned it. But since there wasn't, she had to go
around making trouble for lovesick poets and stirring up violent
protests against the British.

He compares the magnitude of the problems Gonne created to the

destruction of an entire city. Sucker-punch!

And that, ladies and gentleman, is how to spurn a former lover.