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Comment 3 of 3, added on June 29th, 2006 at 3:24 AM.
This is one of my favorite of Yeats' poems (though I guess I could say that about many).
It too was based on a real event. Once when Yeats went out walking with Maud and her sister, "the beautiful mild woman" he describes here as her "close friend." They got to talking about poetry.
What was Adam's curse? After getting booted out of the Garden of Eden, we would have to work for all the things that were dear to us: our food, our children, love. All beautiful things, in fact, from poetry to a woman's face, require labor, even though the rest of the world ("bankers and clergymen") may not acknowledge it as such.
In the last stanzas he mentions love. It, too, required much labor once, when people used to quote things out of old books and sigh and sob and do all sorts of other things that now seemed quite silly. But at the end of the poem he has a thought for the woman: that he could love her in that way, in the way they used to love before, and they could grow old together, happy.
Yeats was changing his style at the time but this one is like his earlier poems.
Camilo from China
Comment 2 of 3, added on September 21st, 2005 at 10:14 PM.
Patricia, your first four words seem very astute, after that your grammar and comments are useless. Adam's Curse IS a wonderful poem... It is a poem about poetry. It is hard not to get a sense of vertigo when peering down at the layers of meaning in the poem, but read carefully and you will see that Yeats sees poetry as a sprezzatura job, a discussion that brings people together, and a beautiful craft directed at a what is born to be beautiful (woman, his Beloved). The ending reveals a failure. That he performs his art so well, and we assume also takes up the art of love (see the 3rd stanza) with the same grace, compounds the despair of the final revelation of love grown "weary-hearted".
Mary from United States
Comment 1 of 3, added on December 12th, 2004 at 1:08 PM.
What a wonderful poem! It's for sure one of my better like ones by Yeats. Emerged from God's own image, Adam's existence was accomanied by Eve--the counter part. As the story was told, both ate the fruit, got the boot for their gaining of knowledge and lost of the innocence.
Patricia Hoke from United States
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This is one of my favorite of Yeats' poems (though I guess I could say that about many).
It too was based on a real event. Once when Yeats went out walking with Maud and her sister, "the beautiful mild woman" he describes here as her "close friend." They got to talking about poetry.
What was Adam's curse? After getting booted out of the Garden of Eden, we would have to work for all the things that were dear to us: our food, our children, love. All beautiful things, in fact, from poetry to a woman's face, require labor, even though the rest of the world ("bankers and clergymen") may not acknowledge it as such.
In the last stanzas he mentions love. It, too, required much labor once, when people used to quote things out of old books and sigh and sob and do all sorts of other things that now seemed quite silly. But at the end of the poem he has a thought for the woman: that he could love her in that way, in the way they used to love before, and they could grow old together, happy.
Yeats was changing his style at the time but this one is like his earlier poems.
Camilo from China