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Yeats uses the rose as an increasingly complex symbol in his poems. The Rose symbolizes Maud Gonne whom he first met in 1889 and regularly proposed to. Traditionally the Rose has been a symbol of spiritual love and supreme beauty for a long period of time. The Rose in Irish poetry sometimes symbolizes a woman's beauty and a symbol of Ireland. The purpose of this paper is to examine how Yeats relates Maud Gonne's beauty to Ireland's beauty. As Yeats could not stop loving her all his life, so he could not stop loving his beautiful country, Ireland. In Cathleen Ni Houlihan that he wrote in 1902 for Maud Gonne, Yeats let Maud Gonne act the role of Cathleen because he felt that she had given herself to Ireland instead of to him. In many cases, the Rose in Yeats's poems symbolizes Maud Gonne and at the same time Ireland. He wanted to praise not only Maud Gonne's beauty but also the beauty of Ireland. Yeats shows his attitude towards the role of literature in the struggle for Irish independence in his poems. He emphasizes his patriotism in his poems by using the image of the rose. It will be possible to understand his poems very well when we grasp the meaning of the rose symbolized in his poetry.
